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Mike White05:00, May 09 2021
Chris Skelton/Stuff
CK Stead’s first novel, Smith’s Dream, was published 50 years ago, but remains one of his best-known works.
Adapted into groundbreaking movie
Smith’s Dream holds a special place in New Zealand literature. As Stead publishes the final volume of his memoirs, he looks back 50 years and talks to Mike White about his first novel, how it almost never made it to print, and why it has two endings. It was a slight book, barely 140 pages between hard covers. It had been laboured on during long holidays and breaks snatched between the author’s work as a professor at Auckland University.
We’re here to talk about her memoir,
From the Centre: A Writer’s Life, which will be launched at the Auckland Writers Festival, where she is one of the guest speakers. Grace is one of New Zealand/Aotearoa’s most celebrated Māori fiction authors, who, over five decades, has won national and international awards for her work, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (considered the most prestigious literary prize after the Nobel). She was made a distinguished companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature in 2007. Grace is known for being self-effacing and it was her publisher, Harriet Allan, of Penguin Random House, who suggested she write a memoir. In an email, Allan describes the importance of Grace’s work: “While conveying a compelling story, Patricia has a powerful ability to enable the reader see the world through her character’s eyes, to open up diverse issues to make us see their human implications,