Event overview
Māori author Tina Makereti in conversation with Amy Sackville
Tina Makereti writes fiction and creative nonfiction. She is the author of three novels, most recently The Mires, which was published in Australia and New Zealand in 2025, and the UK, US and Spain in 2025. A French edition is forthcoming. The Mires was shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Acorn Fiction Prize. Tina’s 2025 essay collection, This Compulsion in Us (Te Herenga Waka Press), includes her prizewinning essay, ‘Lumpectomy’, from the 2022 Landfall Essay Competition.
Tina’s 2018 novel, The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, gives voice to a young Māori man exhibited in the Egyptian Hall in London in the 1840s. It was published by Penguin Random House in New Zealand, with a UK edition following in 2019, and a home at Eksmo in Russia in 2023. The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award.
‘Black Milk’, which won the 2016 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Pacific Region, appears in Black Marks on the White Page (2017), an anthology of Māori & Pasifika short stories that Tina edited with Witi Ihimaera.
Tina’s first novel, Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (Vintage, 2014) was a bestseller for six months, and has been described as a New Zealand classic and ‘a remarkable first [book that] spans generations of Moriori, Māori and Pākehā descendants as they grapple with a legacy of pacifism, violent domination and cross-cultural dilemmas.’ It was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016 and won the 2014 Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Award for Fiction.
Her short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (Huia Publishers, 2010), which combines mythological and contemporary stories, also won the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Award for Fiction in 2011. In 2009 Tina was the recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing (non-fiction), and in the same year received the Pikihuia Award for Best Short Story Written in English. She has been writer in residence at the University of Canterbury, Randall Cottage, Wellington, and Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt. Tina was awarded a Te Tupu Hauroa Development Grant by the Māori Literature Trust in 2026.
Tina convenes one of the Masters workshops in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML), focusing on fiction and creative nonfiction. She is of Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore and Pākehā descent.
Free to attend and open to all.
This special Writers' Centre event concludes What the Water Knows, a two-day programme of research talks, creative activities, and author readings focusing on historic and contemporary relationships with waterways that connect Black, Indigenous and London communities. If you would like to attend the full symposium, you can find out more and book a free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/what-the-water-knows-tickets-1988322798013
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 16 Jun 2026 | 5:00pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
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