The University of Otago Council established the Rhys Brookbanks Prize in Writing yesterday, a literary award which will be bestowed annually to a student at the Department of English, who demonstrates the greatest skill in the art of writing.
Mr Brookbanks (25) studied at the University of Otago from 2005-08 and graduated with BA (hons) degree in English and history, before he moved to Christchurch and completed a postgraduate diploma in journalism at Canterbury University.
He started working for CTV as a reporter and was in his first weeks of the job when he was killed in the collapse of the CTV building in the February 22 earthquake.
Raised in Auckland, he attended private secondary school at St Kentigern College, Pakuranga.
Mr Brookbanks was a writer, whose poems had been published in the University of Otago's long-standing department of English magazine Deep South (2007), Takahe magazine, No. 71 (2010) and the Otago Daily Times.
In 2008, he was president of the English department's literature society (Litsoc) and editor of the 2008 edition of Deep South.
University of Otago head of English Prof Evelyn Tribble said Mr Brookbanks was a "very, very talented writer".
"He was everything you wanted in a student. Serious and committed, but with a great sense of humour. The range and inventiveness of his writing was wonderful, while the standard of his academic writing was also excellent," she said.
The first Rhys Brookbanks Prize in Writing is scheduled to be awarded at the end of the year and will grant $500 to the best undergraduate English student whose work "shows attention to writing as an art, in whatever genre", Prof Tribble said.
