Here’s a glamour fact I’ll bet hardly any of you knew: Salman Rushdie is on the advisory board of the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, home of one of the best Creative Writing MAs in the universe. And here’s another: for all you up-and-coming, passionate writers who are dithering about going for it, you have one week exactly to get your applications fluttering down to the desks of those in charge at said IIML.

November 1 is the deadline (ooh, my birthday!) for both streams. The pagewriting stream has 20 places to study with the legendary duo of Damien Wilkins and Bill Manhire. They will take on novelists, short story writers, poets, and writers of various kinds of non-fiction, including memoir and book-length travel writing. Each year one pagewriting graduate is awarded the Schaeffer Fellowship which takes him or her to the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop. Recent Schaeffer Fellows include the novelists Paula Morris and Tracey Hill, and the poets Anna Livesey and Emily Dobson.

The scriptwriting stream has ten spots, studying with the equally über Ken Duncum. It accepts writers for stage, television, film, and radio. Notable work has come from the scriptwriting workshop including the hit television drama The Insiders Guide to Happiness.

The most recent Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand writes: 'The centre of New Zealand's literary universe now is undoubtedly the creative writing course at Victoria University, which has produced most of the country's prominent writers in the past decade.'

Download your application form here. If you would like the application form posted out to you, email modernletters@vuw.ac.nz or phone 04-463 6854.

Hey, this could be one of those ‘sliding doors’ scenarios, where your life will change totally and irrevocably if you grab this opportunity! Cool!