14 Jul 2025
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Octavia Cade is the recipient of Creative New Zealand’s 2026 Berlin Writer’s Residency.
Octavia is an established and prize-winning writer of speculative fiction with a PhD in science communication. It’s fitting that her standout application is to write a novel about Saturn the alligator, a non-fictional creature that really did escape from the Berlin Zoo during World War II.
Malcolm Burgess, Lead Practice Adviser, Literature at Creative New Zealand says the panel was excited by the idea, describing it as original and amazing.
“Octavia’s proposal captured the panel’s imagination on several levels. The facts have been there for over 80 years, but no-one has thought of turning it into a book before now. On top of that, the proposed story is complex, dark, and funny,” Malcolm says.
Saturn’s death was reported in 2020, which is when Octavia first heard about the adventurous reptile.
“He’d just died, in Moscow Zoo, at the ripe old age of 84, which is an extraordinary age for an American alligator. When Berlin Zoo’s aquarium was bombed in 1943, most of its animals were killed. Not Saturn… he escaped into the streets of Berlin and remained at large for three years, before British soldiers captured him in 1946 and sent him to the Soviets,” Octavia says.
She filed the idea with the thought of one day applying for the Berlin Writer’s Residency, and that time has come.
“There’s something very surreal about the thought of this alligator roaming through the ruins of a war-torn city. It’s both horrific and darkly comic. Clearly the Berlin of today is very different to the Berlin of WW II, but I’m hoping to use my time there to really cement a sense of place of the city where Saturn lurked, looking for food and shelter amidst the riverbanks and bomb craters.”
Octavia’s scientific training in biology and her interest in ecology inform her approach to the story.
“I have a particular interest in urban wildlife, and in how that wildlife can adapt to changing and often very alien environments, and Saturn is a perfect example to explore this. I’m so grateful to Creative New Zealand for the opportunity!”
Creative New Zealand offers the Berlin Writer’s Residency every second year. The residency is for an established New Zealand writer to work on an approved project that must directly benefit the New Zealand writers and the literature sector. Creative New Zealand provides an apartment in Friedrichshain in former East Berlin and a stipend of NZD $45,000 towards travel and living costs.
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