Whiti Hereaka was born in 1978 and grew up in
Taupō. Hereaka is of
Ngāti Tūwharetoa,
Te Arawa and
Pākehā descent. Her favourite childhood reading included books by
Roald Dahl, the
Narnia series,
Anne of Green Gables,
Tanglewood Tales and
The Moomins. In 2022, she was appointed as a permanent, fulltime lecturer in the creative writing programme at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa / Massey University. Hereaka has written many plays for stage and radio as well as several novels, and has held a number of writing residencies, including writer in residence at
Randell Cottage in Wellington in 2007, the Summer residency at the
Michael King Writers Centre in 2012, and the Māori Writer’s Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in 2017. She has been invited to appear at several festivals including the
Auckland Writers Festival, the Taipei International Book Exhibition in Taiwan and the Singapore Writers Festival (all in 2015) and the
WORD Christchurch Festival in 2018. In 2012 she was selected for Te Papa Tupu, a writers’ programme supported by the Māori Literature Trust,
Huia Publishers,
Creative New Zealand and
Te Puni Kōkiri Her book
Legacy from 2018 is a timeslip novel about a Māori teenager who travels back in time to
World War I and finds himself serving as his great-great grandfather, Te Ariki, in the Māori Contingent. She is a trustee of the Māori Literature Trust, and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. == Awards and prizes ==