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Patricia Grace
Photo Credit: © Trinity Thompson-Browne

Patricia Grace

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Patricia Grace is one of New Zealand’s most prominent and celebrated Maori fiction authors and a figurehead of modern New Zealand literature. She garnered initial acclaim in the 1970s with her collection of short stories entitled Waiariki (1975) — the first published book by a Maori woman in New Zealand. She has published six novels and seven short story collections, as well as a number of books for children and a work of non-fiction. She won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for Potiki in 1987, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which also won the 2001 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Her children’s story The Kuia and the Spider won the New Zealand Picture Book of the Year in 1982.

Quotes

'Patricia Grace is... a groundbreaker who is, at the same time, old-fashioned in the calmness of her tone, the particularity of her focus, and her abiding interest in the particularities of Maori customs and stories.'

Paula Morris, NZ Books

'I love Patricia Grace’s writing. She is a gifted story teller whose characters come alive off the page.'

Kerre McIvor, New Zealand journalist, author and columnist

'There is a real purity to Patricia Grace’s fiction. She may be New Zealand literary royalty but her writing is not about showing off her finery.'

Nicky Pellegrino, Herald on Sunday (NZ)