New Zealand novelist and short story writer Janet Frame (the subject of Jane Campion's awardwinning 1990 film An Angel at My Table) was a shedworker right at the beginning of her career.
Frame won the major NZ literary award the Hubert Church Memorial Prize for her 1951 short story collection The Lagoon, and then spent a period in hospital. When she was discharged in 1955, leading NZ writer Frank Sargeson offered her the use of his garden shed (and mentorship) at his property on Esmonde Road on Auckland’s North Shore to write in over the next couple of years. Inside, she produced her strongly autobiographical debut novel, Owls Do Cry in 1957.
The story of this shed period in her life is the focus of the novel and play Gifted by Patrick Evans, published in 2010. The Esmonde Road property can still be visited today. More details here.
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