Patricia Grace

Patricia Frances Grace (Gunson; born 17 August 1937) is a New Zealand Māori writer of novels, short stories, and children's books.

She began writing as a young adult, while working as a teacher.

She was born on 17 August 1937 in Wellington, New Zealand.

Her father was Māori and her mother was European and Irish Catholic.

On her father's side she is descended from politician Wi Parata.

She grew up in the suburb of Melrose, where her father had built the family home, and also spent time with her father's family at Hongoeka, on their ancestral land.

In 1944, when she was seven, her father enlisted in the Māori Battalion to fight in the Second World War.

She attended St Anne's School in Wellington, where she later described experiencing racism: "I found that being different meant that I could be blamed – for a toy gun being stolen, for writing being chalked on a garage wall, for neighbourhood children swearing, for a grassy hillside being set alight".

Grace has said that as a child she did not learn to speak Māori, because it was only spoken at formal events such as tangi (traditional Māori funeral ceremonies).

She began to make efforts to learn as an adult, but found it difficult.

She subsequently attended St Mary's College, where she excelled at basketball, and subsequently Wellington Teachers' Training College.

It was not until she had left high school that she began to read works by New Zealand authors; she said that until this time, "I didn't kind of know that a writer was something one could aspire to be and that was partly because I'd never read writing by New Zealand writers".

She began writing at age 25, while working full-time as a teacher in North Auckland.

Her first published short story was "The Dream", in bilingual magazine Te Ao Hou / The New World in 1966.

In 1974 she received the first Māori Purposes Fund Board grant for Māori writers.

Her early short stories were published in magazines, leading to her becoming the first female Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, Waiariki, in 1975.

Grace's first published book, Waiariki (1975), was the first collection of short stories to be published by a female Māori writer, and its ten stories show the diversity of Māori life and culture.

Writer Rachel Nunns said these early stories "inform readers at an emotional, imaginative level with the sense of what it means to be a Maori".

Her first novel, Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps, followed in 1978.

Grace's first novel, Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps (1978), was about the relationship of a Māori woman and Pākehā man and their experiences coming from different cultures.

It was inspired by the experiences of Grace's parents, and marked the first time a relationship of this kind had been described by a Māori writer.

In 1979, South Pacific Television produced a television version of this story for the show Pacific Viewpoint.

She also had early stories published in the New Zealand Listener.

These early works led to a publisher approaching Grace to ask her to work on a collection of short stories.

Since becoming a full-time writer in the 1980s, Grace has written seven novels, seven short-story collections, a non-fiction biography and an autobiography.

Her works explore Māori life and culture, including the impact of Pākehā (New Zealand European) and other cultures on Māori, with use of the Māori language throughout.

It was followed by her second collection of short stories The Dream Sleepers and Other Stories (1980).

This collection featured a three-page story told by a mother speaking to her new baby, called "Between Earth and Sky", which is one of the best-known and most anthologised New Zealand short stories.

These early works were critically acclaimed.

In the early 1980s, Grace began writing for children, and sought to write books in which Māori children could see their own lives.

The Kuia and the Spider / Te Kuia me te Pungawerewere (1981), illustrated by Kahukiwa, told the story of a spinning contest between a kuia (elderly Māori woman) and a spider, and was published by a group of women from the Spiral Collective in both English and Māori.

In 1984 she collaborated with painter Robyn Kahukiwa to produce Wahine Toa, a book about women from Māori legends.

Grace subsequently published Watercress Tuna and the Children of Champion Street / Te Tuna Watakirihi me Nga Tamariki o te Tiriti o Toa (1984), also illustrated by Kahukiwa (and published in English, Māori and Samoan) and several Māori language readers.

Although she continued working as a full-time teacher until 1985, her income in this period was supplemented by grants from the New Zealand Literary Fund in 1975 and 1983.

Her most well-known novel, Potiki (1986) features a Māori community opposing the private development of their ancestral land.

She has also written a number of children's books, seeking to write books in which Māori children can see their own lives.

Grace is a pioneering and influential figure in New Zealand literature, and over her career has won a number of awards, including the Kiriyama Prize, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, two honorary doctorates of literature, a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement, and an Icon Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand for extraordinary lifetime achievement.

Her books have twice won the top award for fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards.

She was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DCNZM) in 2007, for services to literature.

Patricia Grace is of Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa and Te Āti Awa descent.