Art-writer, poet, anthologist and essayist, Gregory O’Brien has been awarded the 2015 Stout Memorial Fellowship for 2015. Greg has spent much of the past three decades exploring the adjacent territories of imagination and research, of inspiration and scholarship. The Fellowship will allow him to complete a book on art, literature and the environment – passions that have inspired his prolific output, and themes which he drew on in presenting the FoTL Founder Lecture, “Imagination and Research”, in 2013. Greg’s recent books include a collection of poems, Beauties of the Octagonal Pool (2012) as well as monographic publications on artists including Euan Macleod, Pat Hanly and Graham Percy. He has also written two books introducing New Zealand art to young people: Welcome to the South Seas (2004) and Back and Beyond (2008).