At last. A writer makes it onto the front cover of the Herald without having died for the privilege.

Okay, the mention is only a picture pointing to a story inside, but this is tantalising news. Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship winner Craig Marriner has apparently done a runner.

One of the conditions of the Fellowship is that the winner lives (and presumably works) in a central Auckland flat operated by the Frank Sargeson Trust. But as Trust secretary Graeme Lay commented,

He chose to do otherwise and we are not that sorry to see him go … He was just a name on an application form and we judge him on literary grounds and not domestic grounds because we don't know what they are like.

Lay must be wishing he was back in his beloved Tahiti, scene of The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest. Because it ... just ... gets ... worse: some of Marriner's $10,000 loot from the Trust was apparently paid out early.

The Trust probably didn't bank on Marriner doing a runner from under the nose of a firm of lawyers. But then again, no-one makes a bomb from fiction in New Zealand apart from Witi I. and Jenny P., and the royalties from Marriner's Stonedogs probably dried up ages ago.

So it looks like we have a new bad boy of New Zealand literature. Shame he hasn’t got a book coming out soon: it’d probably do wonders for sales.

NB: We've long pondered about the worth of running competitions on LeafSalon, and this is an ideal place to start. if you know where our naughty boy is hiding, drop us a line to hello@LeafSalon.co.nz. If the information proves correct, the first person to reveal Mr Marriner's whereabouts will win a dog-eared copy of the Rough Guide to London.