Keri Hulme Biography

New Zealand writer of Maori, Scots, and English ancestry, born in Christchurch, educated at Canterbury University. Among other employment she has worked in the postal service and as a director for New Zealand television. Silences Between: Moeraki Conversations (1982) was a collection of poetry and prose. Hulme achieved international fame with The Bone People (1983; Booker Prize), a dazzlingly powerful modern fable of epic scope and passionate commitment. As Hulme herself is well aware, the book in many respects defies categorization in its exploitation of techniques and expectations drawn as much from the thriller as from a wide range of consciously national and mythic writing. Violent, amusing, and fiercely independent in many ways, the book has aroused much healthy debate about its author's status as a Maori writer and about the range of personal, national, and mythopoeic claims it stakes. She has since become recognized as an important new voice in New Zealand literature. The Windeater/TeKaihau, a collection of prose and poetry, and Lost Possessions both appeared in 1985. A further collection of poetry, Strands, was published in 1992. She has also published Homeplaces (1989), essays on New Zealand's South Island, with photographs by Robin Morrison.