Young-adult fiction writer Mandy Hager has won the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship.
She has written eight novels, as well as short stories, scripts and non-fiction resources for young people.
The fellowship for 2014 provides a residency of at least six months in Menton, France, at the Villa Isola Bella, where Katherine Mansfield lived during the latter part of her life. It also includes $75,000.
During the residency Ms Hager plans to research a novel about the life of Heloise d'Argenteuil, a nun, scholar and writer known for a doomed love affair with the 12th-century religious philosopher Pierre Abelard.