Keri Hulme

Keri Ann Ruhi Hulme (9 March 1947Template:Snd27 December 2021) was a New Zealand novelist, poet and short-story writer. She also wrote under the pen name Kai Tainui. Her novel The Bone People won the Booker Prize in 1985;<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> she was the first New Zealander to win the award, and also the first writer to win the prize for a debut novel. Hulme's writing explores themes of isolation, postcolonial and multicultural identity, and Māori, Celtic, and Norse mythology.<ref name="ReadNZ">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Guardian">Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life

Hulme was born on 9 March 1947 in Burwood Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand.<ref name="crystal2004">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="contempauthors">Template:Cite book</ref> The daughter of John William Hulme, a carpenter, and Mary Ann Miller, a credit manager, she was the eldest of six children.<ref name="Te Karaka">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="NZ Book Council">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her father was a first-generation New Zealander whose parents were from Lancashire, England, and her mother came from Oamaru, of Orkney Scots and Māori descent (Kāi Tahu and Kāti Māmoe). "Our family comes from diverse people: Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe (South Island Māori iwi); Orkney Islanders; Lancashire folk; Faroese and/or Norwegian migrants," Hulme stated.<ref name="mcleod1996">Template:Cite book</ref>

Hulme grew up in Christchurch at 160 Leaver Terrace, New Brighton, where she attended North New Brighton Primary School and Aranui High School. She described herself as a "very definite and determined child who inherently hate[d] assumed authority".<ref name="Te Karaka"/> In 1958, when she was 11, her father died. Hulme remembered herself as being interested in writing from a young age. She rewrote Enid Blyton stories the way she thought they should have been written, wrote poetry from the age of 12, and composed short stories; her mother organised the side front porch into a study for her after her father's death.<ref name="Te Karaka"/> Some of her poems and short stories were published in Aranui High School's magazine.<ref name="Stuff">Template:Cite web</ref> The family spent their holidays with her mother's family at Moeraki, on the Otago East Coast, and Hulme identified Moeraki as her Template:Lang, "the standing-place of my heart".<ref name="ReadNZ"/>

After high school, Hulme worked as a tobacco picker in Motueka. She began studying for an honours law degree at the University of Canterbury in 1967, but left after four terms—feeling "estranged/out-of-place"<ref name="Te Karaka"/>—and returned to tobacco picking, although she continued to write.<ref name="NZ Book Council"/>

Career

Hulme with a catch of whitebait in 1983

By 1972, Hulme had accumulated a large quantity of notes and drawings and decided to begin writing full-time, but, despite financial support from her family, she returned to work nine months later. She worked in a range of jobs, including in retail, as a fish-and-chips cook, a winder at a woollen mill, and as a mail deliverer in Greymouth, on the West Coast of the South Island. She was also a pharmacist's assistant at Grey Hospital, a proofreader and journalist at the Grey Evening Star, and an assistant television director on the shows Country Calendar, Dig This and Play School.<ref name="Stuff"/> She continued writing, and had her work published in journals and magazines; some appeared under the pseudonym Kai Tainui.<ref name="ReadNZ"/>

Hulme received Literary Fund grants in 1973, 1977, and 1979, and in 1979 she was a guest at the East-West Center in Hawaii as a visiting poet.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hulme held the 1977 Robert Burns Fellowship and became writer-in-residence at the University of Otago in 1978.<ref name="ReadNZ" /> During this time, she continued working on her novel, the bone people.

Hulme submitted the manuscript for the bone people to several publishers over a period of 12 years, until it was accepted for publication by the Spiral Collective, a feminist literary and arts collective in New Zealand.<ref name="Oxford Reference">Template:Cite book</ref> The book was published in February 1984 and won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize in 1985.<ref name="NZ Book Council"/><ref name="smith2001">Template:Cite book</ref> Hulme was the first New Zealander to win the Booker Prize and also the first writer to win the prize for their debut novel.<ref name="NZHerald">Template:Cite web</ref> The ceremony was broadcast on Channel 4. As Hulme was unable to attend, she asked three women from Spiral – Irihapeti Ramsden, Marian Evans and Miriama Evans – to accept the award on her behalf. Ramsden and Miriama Evans walked up to the podium wearing Māori korowai, arm in arm with Marian Evans in a tuxedo, and chanted a Māori karanga as they went.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1985, Hulme was writer-in-residence at the University of Canterbury and in 1990 she was awarded the 1990 Scholarship in Letters from the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council Literature Committee for two years. Also in 1990, she was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1996 she became the patron of New Zealand Republic.<ref> Template:Cite web </ref> Hulme also served on the Literary Fund Advisory Committee (1985–1989) and New Zealand's Indecent Publications Tribunal (1985–1990).<ref name="ReadNZ"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Around 1986 Hulme began working on a second novel, BAIT, about fishing and death. She also worked on a third novel, On the Shadow Side; these two works were referred to by Hulme as "twinned novels".<ref name="ReadNZ"/><ref name="Stuff"/>

Common themes in Hulme's writing are identity and isolation.<ref name="ReadNZ"/><ref name="Guardian"/> Inspiration for her characters and stories also often came to her in dreams; she first dreamt of a mute, long-haired boy when she was 18, and wrote a short story about him called Simon Peter’s Shell. The boy continued to appear in her dreams and eventually became the main character of the bone people.<ref name="ReadNZ"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life and death

In 1973, Hulme won a land ballot and became the owner of a plot in the remote coastal settlement of Ōkārito in south Westland, on the South Island of New Zealand.<ref name="Stuff"/><ref name="NZ Book Council"/> She built an octagonal house on the land and spent most of her adult life (almost 40 years) there. She vocally opposed plans to develop the settlement with additional housing or tourist facilities and believed it deserved special government protection.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In late 2011, Hulme announced that she was leaving the area as local body rates (property taxes) meant she could no longer afford to live there.<ref name="NZHerald"/><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> She identified as atheist, aromantic, and asexual.<ref name="Oxford Reference"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Hulme's given name was recorded at birth as "Kerry", although her family used the spelling "Keri". She legally changed her name to "Keri" in 2001.<ref name="Stuff"/>

She died from dementia at a care home in Waimate on 27 December 2021, at the age of 74.<ref name="RNZ">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Works

Novels

• The Bone People (Spiral Press, 1984)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• BAIT and On the Shadow Side (unfinished)<ref name="Stuff"/>

Poetry

• The silences between (Moeraki Conversations) (Auckland University Press, 1982)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Lost Possessions (Victoria University Press, 1985)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Strands (Auckland University Press, 1993)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Other works

• Te Kaihau: The Windeater (Victoria University Press, 1986), collection of short stories<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Te Whenua, Te Iwi/The Land and The People co-edited with Jock Philips (Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, 1987), includes Hulme's autobiographical piece "Okatiro and Moeraki"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Homeplaces: Three Coasts of the South Island of New Zealand (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), autobiography<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Hokitika Handmade (Hokitika Craft Gallery Co-operative, 1999), description and history of the co-operative and its members<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Ahua – the story of Moki (2000), libretto of an opera based on the story of the Ngāi Tahu ancestor Moki, commissioned by the Christchurch City Choir<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• Stonefish (Huia Publishers, 2004), collection of short stories and poems<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Adaptation into film

In 1983, Hulme's short story "Hooks and Feelers" was made into a short film of the same name starring Bridgette Allen.<ref name="hedback1996">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>The New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision Catalogue → F6624, Hooks and Feelers Template:Webarchive</ref> In 1995, Christine Parker wrote and directed, and Caterina de Nave produced, an adaptation of Hulme's 1991 short story "Hinekaro Goes On a Picnic and Blows Up Another Obelisk".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards

Year	Award	Work	Notes
1975	Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award	Hooks and Feelers	<ref name="ReadNZ"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
1977	Māori Trust Fund Prize		<ref name="ReadNZ"/>
1984	New Zealand Book of the Year (Fiction)	the bone people	<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
	Mobil Pegasus Award for Māori Literature	the bone people	<ref name="ReadNZ"/>
1985	Booker Prize	the bone people	<ref name=":0" /><ref name="RNZ"/>
1987	Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore Prize	the bone people	<ref name="ReadNZ"/><ref name="RNZ"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• New Zealand literature

External links

• Bibliography of Keri Hulme's work and associated book reviews, University of Auckland Library
• How Keri Hulme's the bone people changed the way we read now, the Booker Prizes website.
• Full length 1985 Booker Prize ceremony where Keri Hulme wins for the bone people, YouTube
• Keri Hulme reads from The Bone People on Radio New Zealand