Patricia Grace

Born to a Māori father and white mother, Patricia Grace identifies as Māori and is affiliated with the iwi (clans) of Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa, and Te Āti Awa. Growing up, she spent some of her childhood in the suburban home that her father built outside of Wellington, New Zealand, and some of it on her father’s ancestral land of Hongoeka. Although she was an avid reader as a child, she started writing fiction only after attending Wellington Teachers’ College and becoming a full-time teacher at the age of 25. While teaching, she joined a writing club and began to publish her work, setting off her ground-breaking career. In 1975, she became the first female Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories. She then began writing prolifically while simultaneously raising seven children. As of 2021, Grace has written seven novels, seven short story collections, six children’s books, an autobiography, and a biography. Her work often deals with topics surrounding Māori identity and New Zealand’s history of colonialism. Some of her most famous works include Tu, written in 2004, which discusses the Māori Battalion that fought in Italy in World War II, and Potiki, written in 1986, which depicts a Māori community’s struggle to defend its land against development. In 2008, she won the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She now lives on ancestral land near Hongoeka Bay.