Author and historian Dr Monty Soutar. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Author and historian Dr Monty Soutar. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Paula Morris on the wealth of Māori writers and their passionate readership
This year's Ockham NZ Book Awards showcased Māori writing talent and accomplishment, including two Māori debut winners — Rebecca K. Reilly for fiction and Nicole Titihuia Hawkins for poetry, along with novelist Whiti Hereaka who took the $60,000Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.
"I was particularly delighted in the strong showing — crushing it — by Māori across the board," says Kelly Ana Morey, the celebrated Māori fiction writer who was one of this year's judges. "What a turnaround. Go us!"
This week the Auckland Writers Festival announced the line-up for its August events, postponed from May, including almost 50 Māori writers and interviewers. The programme is due to be announced on June 15.
The first Kupu Māori Writers Festival is about to begin in Rotorua with 16 public events and 39 speakers, all broadcast — free and live — on YouTube and Twitch. School and marae events throughout the week lead to a day of panels and interviews on Saturday, June 18. Featured writers include Hereaka, Patricia Grace, Stacey Morrison, Hinemoa Elder, Becky Manawatu and Dr Rangi Mātāmua.
"There's a big demand for books by Māori writers," says Sam Elworthy, director of Auckland University Press. The home of Māori writers since the 1960s, AUP has just published Tūnui/Comet, a new collection by acclaimed poet Robert Sullivan. Penguin, the long-time publisher of Patricia Grace and Witi Ihimaera, recently launched How to Loiter in a Turf War, the debut novel by Coco Solid (Ngāpuhi). From Te Herenga Waka University Press there's Home Theatre, a debut story collection by Anthony Lapwood, and the forthcoming "hybrid novel" Tauhou, by Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall. Australian press Text published Nic Low's Uprising: Walking the Southern Alps of New Zealand, a book informed by the author's Ngāi Tahu ancestors and their traditional oral maps.
Nic Low. Photo / Stephen Mushin
This September, Monty Soutar, best known as an historian and expert on Māori involvement in world wars, will publish his first novel, Kāwai: For Such a Time as This (Bateman). The beginning of an epic trilogy, a multigenerational saga that explores history from Māori points of view, Kāwai is set on the East Coast in the 18th century. "Historical fiction allows Māori writers the imaginative space to create different, more inclusive versions of New Zealand's past," says Soutar. "It's the counter-narrative of Māori history we know so little about."
Colleen Maria Lenihan's debut collection Kōhine is published next month by Huia. Lenihan returned to New Zealand in 2016, after living in Tokyo and New York. Some stories are informed by mātauranga Māori, like "Nerissa", set in 1950s Hokianga and "inspired by my great grandmother, who was a tohunga", says Lenihan. But others are set in the mizu shōbai, Japan's demi-monde of hostess bars and strip clubs. Lenihan sees no disconnect between these different worlds. "Māori can write about any subject matter in any setting. We are natural travellers and storytellers."
Like Lenihan, Shelley Burne-Field is an alum of Te Papa Tupu mentorship for Māori writers and the Pikihuia story awards. Burne-Field's "Speaking in Tongues" was the only work by a New Zealand writer shortlisted for this year's Commonwealth Story Prize. Another story, "Pinching Out Dahlias", is the most-read work of fiction ever published on the Newsroom site, overtaking the previous leader, Lenihan's "Love Hotel". With its subject of school racism, "it struck several nerves", Burne-Field notes.
Burne-Field's work is about to appear, in Spanish translation, in a Mexican anthology of New Zealand stories. Her influences include Ihimaera, Ruth Dallas and Toni Morrison. "At my dad's tangi last year, a good friend of his gave me a Eudora Welty collection out of his own bookcase," says Burne-Field, already an avid reader of the iconic Mississippi writer. "It's funny who shares a love of short stories in Aotearoa New Zealand."
Both Burne-Field and Lenihan worked with me on Wharerangi, the new online Māori literature hub. The word "wharerangi", chosen by te reo consultant Hemi Kelly, means storehouse or raised platform, and the site is both a source of information for Māori writers — contests, residencies, other opportunities — and a platform for writers. Funded by Creative New Zealand, it helps both writers and readers locate new books, essays, poetry and stories by Māori writers in either English or te reo.
Shelley Burne-Field.
The Kotahi Rau Pukapuka initiative is in its third year, buoyed by the phenomenal success of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in te reo Māori. Hare Pota me te Whatu Manapou is the bestselling title in Auckland University Press history. A translation of Ihimaera's novel Bulibasha: The King of the Gypsies — Puripāha: Te Pane Kaewa — was launched last month, and a te reo version of my own novel, Rangatira, follows in 2023. Also on next year's list is a te reo original by Sir Pou Temara, on the battle of Orākau.
"We're a mission-driven publisher in a Treaty-based university," says Elworthy, noting that demand for Kotahi Rau Pukapuka is high, with most of its titles already in reprint. "We should be publishing in te reo Māori as much as we're publishing in English."
Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai) is a fiction writer and essayist, the founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature, anzliterature.com, and the managing editor of Wharerangi, maorilithub.co.nz.
