The Arts Board of Creative New Zealand has recently awarded Auckland-based writer Kapka Kassabova with the Berlin Writers’ Residency, worth approximately NZ$60,000. Kassabova, an award-winning novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, is said to have been selected from a strong field of applicants, and will take up the nine-month residency at the beginning of September. The Arts Board will cover the rental cost of an apartment situated in central Berlin, and provide her with a NZ$3,000 monthly stipend and travel allowance. Born in Bulgaria in 1973, Kassabova emigrated to England and then New Zealand in 1992. English, in which she has written two acclaimed novels and poetry collections, amongst other works, is her fourth language. Earlier this year, Kassabova was co-winner of the 2002 Landfall Essay Competition, with an essay entitled 'We Too Are Europe', and also won New Zealand Travel Writer of the Year category in the 2002 Cathay Pacific Media Awards. 'I’m very grateful to have this opportunity and it has come at a perfect time with relation to my new project for a novel,' Kassabova said. 'My novels so far have had a strong European connection, and this will continue with the new one.' Arts Board Chair Murray Shaw commented that the residency is an excellent opportunity for a New Zealand writer to live in a European cultural hub. 'Kapka is a talented, versatile writer who has already made her mark in New Zealand literature,' he says. 'It will be interesting to see what impact her return to Europe will have on her writing, and I look forward to reading the work that results from her time in Berlin.'