Concept

Keri Hulme

Summary
Keri Ann Ruhi Hulme (9 March 1947 - 27 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; 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 Maori, Celtic, and Norse mythology. Hulme was born on 9 March 1947 in Burwood Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand. The daughter of John William Hulme, a carpenter, and Mary Ann Miller, a credit manager, she was the eldest of six children. 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. 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". 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. Some of her poems and short stories were published in Aranui High School's magazine. The family spent their holidays with her mother's family at Moeraki, on the Otago East Coast, and Hulme identified Moeraki as her turangawaewae-ngakau, "the standing-place of my heart". After high school, Hulme worked as a tobacco picker in Motueka.
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