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Albert Wendt
Summary
Albert Tuaopepe Wendt (born 27 October 1939) is a Samoan poet and writer who lives in New Zealand. He is one of the most influential writers in Oceania. His notable works include Sons for the Return Home, published in 1973 (adapted into a feature film in 1979), and Leaves of the Banyan Tree, published in 1979. As an academic he has taught at universities in Samoa, Fiji, Hawaii and New Zealand, and from 1988 to 2008 was the professor of New Zealand literature at the University of Auckland.
Wendt is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including twice receiving the Commonwealth Writers Prize, multiple top awards at the New Zealand Book Awards, the 2012 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction and an Icon Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand in 2018. In 2013 he was appointed a member of the Order of New Zealand, New Zealand's highest civilian honour, recognising his pivotal role in the formation of Pacific literature in English.
Wendt was born in Apia, Western Samoa (now known as Samoa) in 1939, and lived in Samoa as a child. He was one of nine children, and his father was a plumber. He is of German heritage through his great-grandfather on his father's side, but in 2002 said he considered his family heritage to be "totally Samoan". In 1952, Wendt received a scholarship to attend New Plymouth Boys' High School in New Zealand. He graduated in 1957. During his time at the school he had a couple of poems and a short story published in the school's annual magazine, The Taranakian.
He completed a diploma of teaching at Ardmore Teachers' College in 1959, and subsequently attended Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an Master of Arts in History in 1964. His Master's thesis was about the Mau, Samoa's independence movement from colonialism during the first decade of the 1900s. He began to publish work in literary magazines, including the New Zealand School Journal, the New Zealand Listener, and Landfall while attending Victoria University.
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