Keri Hulme

Margery Fee (University of British Columbia)

Ed. by Jennifer Lawn, Massey University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 9.1.2: New Zealand Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Doreen D'Cruz (Massey University), Jennifer Lawn (Massey University), John C. Ross (Massey University), Mark Williams (Victoria University of Wellington)

Dates

Born 9 Apr 1947
Died 27 Dec 2021
Activity 1985-2021

Places

Born in New Zealand
Active in New Zealand

Cultural Identities

New Zealand Maori

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet
Story-writer

Resources

Hulme's Works

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In 1985, Hulme won the prestigious Booker Prize for her novel

the bone people

(1984). Its Maori perspective and asexual heroine were unusual, as was its vision of a colonial New Zealand transformed into a postcolonial Aotearoa, where Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) and Maori would eat and drink together at the same table. It resonated with another nation-building novel: the 1981 winner, Salman Rushdie’s

Midnight’s Children

similarly imagined an unpartitioned India.

Hulme was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1947, the eldest of six children. Her father, a first-generation New Zealander whose parents came from Lancashire, died when she was eleven. Her mother, part Orkney Scots and part Ngai Tahu Maori, supported the children working as a clerk, shop owner and manager.

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2104 words

Citation: Fee, Margery. "Keri Hulme". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 September 2006; last revised 30 December 2018. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2251, accessed 17 October 2024.]

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