It's just been revealed that Dunedin writer Laurence Fearnley will be the 2007 Robert Burns Fellow, based at the University of Otago in Dunedin.

Ms F gets a year's salary and accommodation paid for, and will use it to complete the final book in a trilogy of novels set in Southland and Central Otago.

Fearnley's star is obviously on the rise: earlier this year, the Penguin author was selected to spend a month at the Island of Residencies in Tasmania. In 2004, she was an 'Artists to the Antarctic' Fellow, where she gathered material for her most recently published novel, Degrees of Separation. (An earlier novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montanas.)

A bit of digging around turns up the fact that The Fellowship was established in 1958 by a group who wished to remain anonymous - I'm guessing they were Scottish - to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Robert Burns. And also to 'perpetuate appreciation of the valuable services rendered to the early settlement of Otago by the Burns family'.

The list of previous Burns winners reads like a Who's Who of NZ literature, so Ms F is going to be a name to watch closely. (No pressure, luv.)