Keri Hulme, pictured at the Writers Festival in Auckland in 2014, has died aged 74. Photo / NZME
Keri Hulme, pictured at the Writers Festival in Auckland in 2014, has died aged 74. Photo / NZME
Critically acclaimed novelist Keri Hulme has died aged 74.
Hulme made history in 1985 when she became the first person from New Zealand to win the Booker Prize for her novel The Bone People, which was also the first debut novel to win the prestigious award.
Born in Christchurch, Hulme is the eldest of six children. For many years, the literary great lived in the octagonal house she built in Ōkārito, on the South Island's West Coast.
Nephew Matthew Salmons told Radio New Zealand this afternoon that the award-winning author had been suffering from dementia for several years.
She would always be remembered as a legend by family members.
"For us, it was her efforts and sort of reconnecting our whānau with our whakapapa Māori, with our Kāi Tahu roots, with our whenua, that's been the greatest gift that she's given us and it's a long-lasting legacy that we're all intensely proud of," he told RNZ.
A private burial would be arranged for Hulme, her nephew said.
In a 2018 article, Hulme, of Māori, Celtic and Norse heritage, recalled writing and creating stories from her early childhood influenced especially by family holidays on the Otago East Coast. Her heritage and this landscape were woven through her short stories, poetry collections and novels.
In the years before the publication of The Bone People, Hulme had found it hard to make a living writing full-time, so resorted to a series of part-time jobs.
The jobs allowed her time to refine her writing and the publication of a number of stories and poems, some written under the name Kai Tainui, saw her win several awards, including the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award.
When The Bone People was first published in 1984, it received critical acclaim and became an immediate bestseller.
Novelist Keri Hulme (second from right) with Spiral Publishing collective (from left): Miriama Evans, Marian Evans and Irihapeti Ramsden. Photo / NZME
Feminist publishing collective Spiral had published first editions of the novel after Hulme found that mainstream publishers wanted to edit her text.
The novel also won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Mobil Pegasus Award for Māori Literature, while Hulme was awarded the University of Canterbury Writer's Fellowship.
She also published short stories, poetry and prose, including The Silences Between: Moeraki Conversations in 1982. Several of her stories have been translated into other languages.
