Patricia Frances Grace (; born 17 August 1937) is a New Zealand writer of novels, short stories, and children's books. She began writing as a young adult, while working as a teacher. 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. Her first novel, Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps, followed in 1978.
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. 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.
Early life and career
Patricia Grace is of Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa and Te Āti Awa descent. 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". She subsequently attended St Mary's College, where she excelled at basketball, 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". In 1979, South Pacific Television produced a television version of this story for the show Pacific Viewpoint. 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. These early works were critically acclaimed. In 1984 she collaborated with painter Robyn Kahukiwa to produce Wahine Toa: Women of Maori Myth, a book about women from Māori legends featuring Kahukiwa's paintings. 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. 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.
In 1985, Grace received a writing fellowship at Victoria University of Wellington, which enabled her to give up teaching, become a full-time writer, and complete the novel Potiki (1986), which became her most successful novel. Grace intentionally did not include a glossary for Māori language terms in the book or italicise these terms, on the basis that she "didn't want the Māori language to be treated as a foreign language in its own country". Grace said that she was endeavouring to write about "ordinary lives of ordinary people" and did not expect it to be seen as political.
Grace was also active in the promotion of Māori arts during the 1980s. In 1983 she was a founding member of Haeata, a Māori women artists' collective, through which she guided young Māori women artists and participated in group exhibitions such as "Karanga Karanga" (1986), which was the first exhibition of collaborative work by Māori women artists in a public museum. In the late 1980s, she was a founding member of Te Hā, a collective of Māori writers. Her third short story collection, Electric City and Other Stories was published in 1987. Academic Roger Robinson said that while the book sometimes seems like a polemic, "Grace's descriptive and impressionistic skills, her insight into the consciousness of women and children, and the sustained inwardness of the Māori perspective, make Cousins a significant and uniquely Māori version of the genre of family saga". Grace has used Cousins as an example of her approach to writing, which is to develop characters before developing plot: "I had an idea in mind that I was going to base the novel around two cousins, two women who shared the same ancestry, and during the course of the story the third cousin became important to the plot."
Her fourth novel, Baby No-Eyes, was published in 1998, having taken her five years to write. Nelson Wattie, writing in the New Zealand Review of Books, called it "profoundly disturbing" and lacking in coherence, but acknowledged that "the doubts expressed here run counter to the warmth with which this book, like others of its author, has been greeted elsewhere". It was soon followed by her fifth novel Dogside Story (2001) centred on a small seaside Māori community. Her sixth novel, Tu (2004), was based on the experiences of the Māori Battalion in Italy during the Second World War, and in particular the experiences of Grace's father and other family members who were part of the Battalion. Reviewer Iain Sharp praised Grace's compassionate treatment of the subject, concluding: "The crowning achievement of this fine writer's career, Tu will surely become one of the classics of our literature". In 2013 it was adapted for the theatre by New Zealand playwright Hone Kouka.
Small Holes in the Silence, published in 2006, was Grace's first collection of short stories since 1987. Lawrence Jones in the New Zealand Review of Books praised the variety of stories but felt it did not meet the "sheer sustained emotional engagement of the earlier collections", Both reviewers felt that the short story "Eben", about a mentally disabled homeless man, was the strongest story in the collection. Grace was approached around this time by the family of Ned Nathan, a Māori Battalion soldier who was wounded in Crete, and his wife Katina, a Cretan woman who nursed him back to health, and asked to write the story of their relationship. The resulting non-fiction biography, Ned & Katina: a true love story, was published in 2009. It was her first novel in over ten years, and was dedicated to her husband who had died in 2013. Simone Oettli, in her review for Landfall, noted that the themes of the book include "acceptance of cultural differences ... disappearance and loss, love and belonging, as well as the craft of storytelling". In July 2016 a sculpture in her honour was unveiled on the Porirua Writers' Walk, featuring a quote from Potiki (Grace also features on the Wellington Writers Walk, established in 2002). In 2017 her children's book Watercress Tuna and the Children of Champion Street was adapted for the stage by Tupe Lualua and performed by 70 students from Cannon's Creek School at the Measina Festival, a showcase of Pasifika art and theatre. In 2018, a bilingual edition of Wāhine Toa, translated by Hēni Jacob, was published by Te Tākupu (the publishing house of Te Wānanga o Raukawa).
Her autobiography From the Centre: a writer's life was published by Penguin Books in May 2021. Reviewer Emma Espiner said of the book that it "relays a lifetime of doing things her own way"; "The picture that emerges is of a quietly determined, subversive and nuanced thinker".
In 2024, a new collection of short stories by Grace was published, titled Bird Child and Other Stories. Her granddaughter Miriama Grace-Smith designed the cover artwork. It is her first new short story collection in seventeen years. When readers of Newsroom were asked to share their thoughts on Grace to enter a contest for a free copy of the book, Steve Braunias noted that he had previously seen "enthusiastic comments about authors but nothing resembling the depth of feeling – let's call it what it is: awe – towards Grace". A subsequent review of the book in Newsroom concluded that the book is "a worthwhile addition to Grace's legacy".
Awards and honours
Grace has won awards for her writing since the outset of her career, with her first book, Waiariki (1975), receiving the Hubert Church Memorial Award for Best First Book of Fiction, awarded by PEN NZ. and won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction in 1987. In 1994 it received the award in Germany. Baby No-Eyes (1988) was shortlisted for the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize. She also received Scholarships in Letters in 1988 and 1992–1993.
Dogside Story (2001) won the 2001 Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003, and was shortlisted in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2002 and for the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize in 2004. and the 2005 Nielsen Book Data New Zealand Booksellers' Choice Award. In the same year, her children's picture book Haka, translated into Māori as Whiti te Rā! by Kawata Teepa, was the recipient of the Te Kura Pounamu Award for the best Māori language work at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
In 2005 Grace received an Icon Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, an award bestowed on twenty of New Zealand's most significant living artists for extraordinary lifetime achievement. In 2006, she was one of three honourees awarded a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement, recognising her significant contribution to New Zealand's literature. Helen Clark, then the prime minister of New Zealand, said her work "played a key role in the emergence of Maori fiction in English". In 2009, she declined redesignation as a Dame Companion following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government. At the time, she expressed the opinion that the restoration of titles was a retrograde step and that she "thought that we were getting away from the colonial past".
In 2008, Grace was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Grace received an honorary Doctorate of Letters (DLit) from the World Indigenous Nations University in 2016, conferred at Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki, for her literary accomplishments and her writing around Māori themes. In the same year, she was awarded the Te Tohu Aroha mō Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu (Exemplary/Supreme Award) at the Te Waka Toi Awards, which she described as a "great honour".
Personal life
Grace was married to children's author Kerehi Waiariki Grace, having met him at teachers' college. Grace has described their marriage as one of shared contributions: "My husband and I worked together on everything that needed to be done. It wasn't as though I had to do the housework and look after the children, because we shared all this."
Grace does voluntary work, such as managing iwi work schemes for unemployed people. , Grace was still living in Hongoeka, on her ancestral land and close to her home marae (meeting place).