Keri Hulme

Hulme was born on 9 March 1947 in Burwood Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand. The daughter of John William Hulme, a carpenter, and Mary Ann Miller, a credit manager, she was the eldest of six children. Her father was a first-generation New Zealander whose parents were from Lancashire, England, and her mother came from Oamaru, of Orkney Scots and Māori descent (Kāi Tahu and Kāti Māmoe). "Our family comes from diverse people: Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe (South Island Māori iwi); Orkney Islanders; Lancashire folk; Faroese and/or Norwegian migrants," Hulme stated. Hulme grew up in Christchurch at 160 Leaver Terrace, New Brighton, where she attended North New Brighton Primary School and Aranui High School. She described herself as a "very definite and determined child who inherently hate[d] assumed authority". The family spent their holidays with her mother's family at Moeraki, on the Otago East Coast, and Hulme identified Moeraki as her , "the standing-place of my heart". After high school, Hulme worked as a tobacco picker in Motueka. She began studying for an honours law degree at the University of Canterbury in 1967, but left after four terms—feeling "estranged/out-of-place"—and returned to tobacco picking, although she continued to write. ==Career==

By 1972, Hulme had accumulated a large quantity of notes and drawings and decided to begin writing full-time, but, despite financial support from her family, she returned to work nine months later. She worked in a range of jobs, including in retail, as a fish-and-chips cook, a winder at a woollen mill, and as a mail deliverer in Greymouth, on the West Coast of the South Island. She was also a pharmacist's assistant at Grey Hospital, a proofreader and journalist at the Grey Evening Star, and an assistant television director on the shows Country Calendar, Dig This and Play School. Hulme held the 1977 Robert Burns Fellowship and became writer-in-residence at the University of Otago in 1978. The book was published in February 1984 and won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize in 1985. Hulme was the first New Zealander to win the Booker Prize and also the first writer to win the prize for their debut novel. The ceremony was broadcast on Channel 4. As Hulme was unable to attend, she asked three women from Spiral – Irihapeti Ramsden, Marian Evans and Miriama Evans – to accept the award on her behalf. Ramsden and Miriama Evans walked up to the podium wearing Māori korowai, arm in arm with Marian Evans in a tuxedo, and chanted a Māori karanga as they went. In 1985, Hulme was writer-in-residence at the University of Canterbury and in 1990 she was awarded the 1990 Scholarship in Letters from the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council Literature Committee for two years. Also in 1990, she was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal. In 1996 she became the patron of New Zealand Republic. Hulme also served on the Literary Fund Advisory Committee (1985–1989) and New Zealand's Indecent Publications Tribunal (1985–1990). Around 1986 Hulme began working on a second novel, BAIT, about fishing and death. She also worked on a third novel, On the Shadow Side; these two works were referred to by Hulme as "twinned novels". == Personal life and death ==

In 1973, Hulme won a land ballot and became the owner of a plot in the remote coastal settlement of Ōkārito in south Westland, on the South Island of New Zealand. In late 2011, Hulme announced that she was leaving the area as local body rates (property taxes) meant she could no longer afford to live there. She identified as atheist, aromantic, and asexual. Hulme's given name was recorded at birth as "Kerry", although her family used the spelling "Keri". She legally changed her name to "Keri" in 2001. ==Works==

Novels • The Bone People (Spiral Press, 1984) • BAIT and On the Shadow Side (unfinished) • Lost Possessions (Victoria University Press, 1985) • Strands (Auckland University Press, 1993) Other works • Te Kaihau: The Windeater (Victoria University Press, 1986), collection of short stories • Te Whenua, Te Iwi/The Land and The People co-edited with Jock Philips (Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, 1987), includes Hulme's autobiographical piece "Okatiro and Moeraki" • Homeplaces: Three Coasts of the South Island of New Zealand (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), autobiography • Hokitika Handmade (Hokitika Craft Gallery Co-operative, 1999), description and history of the co-operative and its members • Ahua – the story of Moki (2000), libretto of an opera based on the story of the Ngāi Tahu ancestor Moki, commissioned by the Christchurch City Choir • Stonefish (Huia Publishers, 2004), collection of short stories and poems Adaptation into film In 1983, Hulme's short story "Hooks and Feelers" was made into a short film of the same name starring Bridgette Allen. In 1995, Christine Parker wrote and directed, and Caterina de Nave produced, an adaptation of Hulme's 1991 short story "Hinekaro Goes On a Picnic and Blows Up Another Obelisk". ==Awards==