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Author C.K. Stead's appointment as an additional member of The Order of New Zealand marks a career in New Zealand literature spanning more than 55 years.
"It's obviously a very great honour - I'm delighted for myself and also for Kay, my wife, and family, because it's quite an up-and-down business being a writer.
"You have good times and bad times, and I've had tremendous family support," said Professor Christian Karlson Stead.
Receiving New Zealand's highest honour was not something he envisioned when he embarked on writing in the 1950s.
"New Zealand itself has changed so much. In those days, New Zealand writers were recognised by one another and by a very small literary community. We didn't have any kind of public profile at all, really.
"Now - there's a commercial aspect to it as well, of course - but there's much more of a public for New Zealand writing, much more interest in New Zealand in our own writers.
"So you couldn't quite foresee that there would be that change. You just move from stage to stage, you don't think of the long term at all."
The public reaction to his writing could still surprise, said the 74-year-old.
"I don't lack confidence in myself, but you never feel sure what the public reaction to your work will be. You just proceed on the working principle that you've got to please yourself and then hope other people will like it.
"And sometimes what people like surprises you and things that you think are going to be a great success are not. It's all a bit surprising and unpredictable."
The protege of Frank Sargeson and Allen Curnow has won several awards at the New Zealand Book Awards, starting with a collection of poems, Quesada, in 1976.
His novel Mansfield and his poetry collection The Red Tram were shortlisted at the 2005 awards.
A Professor of English at the University of Auckland for 20 years until he retired to write full-time, Professor Stead is as well known for his novels and poems as he is for his literary critiques - and the often public feuds that have stemmed from them.
He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature in 1985, and his appointment as an additional member of New Zealand's highest honour puts him in an elite club limited to only 20 living people at any one time.
Other literary heavyweights previously appointed include Curnow and Janet Frame. Their passing left Margaret Mahy as the only New Zealand writer in the group. "I think it's nice that, as a writer, I'm getting it," he said.
A new book of poems, The Black River, is out soon. Poetry writing "when it seems to go right" pleases him most, but fiction allows him to speak to a wider audience.
