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Patricia GraceNgāti Raukawa & Te Ati Awa
2005 ICON
Writer
Patricia Grace is a leading New Zealand writer and has been a key figure in the emergence of Māori writing in English since the mid 1970s. Her writing articulates Māori values and consciousness, with an emphasis on their expression in a variety of communities. Her work is also published in the United States, United Kingdom, Holland, Spain, Italy and Germany.
Patricia Grace was born in Wellington in 1937. Her first collection of short stories, Waiariki, was published in 1975 and won the PEN/Hubert Church Award for Best First Book of Fiction. Her first novel Mutuwhenua (1978) was the first novel ever published by a Māori woman writer and was short listed for the fiction section of the New Zealand Book Awards. She was awarded the Victoria University writing fellowship in 1985 where she completed her second novel, Potiki (1986), which went on to win the fiction section of the New Zealand Book Awards in 1987. Her third collection of stories, Electric City and Other Stories, was published in 1987 and was followed by Selected Stories in 1991. The Sky People, her most recent collection of short stories was published in 1994. Her third novel, Cousins (1992), again placed her on the shortlist for the fiction section of the 1992 New Zealand Book Awards. Baby No-eyes, her fourth novel, was published in 1998 and short listed for the Tasmania/Pacific Prize for Literature.
Patricia was awarded the Queen's Service Order in 1988 and an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Victoria University in 1989. She was also awarded the Lißeraturpreis from Frankfurt, Germany (1994) for Potiki, which has been translated into several languages.
Patricia's novel, Dogside Story (2001), won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Book Prize in 2001; was long listed for the Booker Prize in 2002; was short listed for the fiction prize of the Montana Book Awards 2002 and the Tasmania/ Pacific Prize for Literature. Her latest novel, Tu (2004), won the Deutz Medal for Fiction or Poetry at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2005.
In 2006 Patricia was awarded the $60,000 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement. The Award recognises writers who have made a significant contribution to New Zealand Literature.
Patricia was acknowledged in 2007 in the Queen’s birthday honours list, becoming a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for her services to literature.
In the same year she was selected as the 2008 Laureate of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, announced at a ceremony at the University of Oklahoma . An international jury representing 10 countries selected her as the winner of the US$50,000 prize administered by the University of Oklahoma and its international magazine, World Literature Today.
She lives in Plimmerton on her ancestral land of Ngāti Toa, near her home Marae at Hongoeka Bay.
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