New Zealand literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by the people of New Zealand. It often deals with New Zealand themes, people or places, is written predominantly in New Zealand English, and features Māori culture and the use of the Māori language. Before the arrival and settlement of Europeans in New Zealand in the 19th century, Māori culture had a strong oral tradition. Early European settlers wrote about their experiences travelling and exploring New Zealand. The concept of a "New Zealand literature", as distinct from English literature, did not originate until the 20th century, when authors began exploring themes of landscape, isolation, and the emerging New Zealand national identity. Māori writers became more prominent in the latter half of the 20th century, and Māori language and culture have become an increasingly important part of New Zealand literature.
Kauraka Kauraka was a Cook Islands writer. He was born in Avatiu on Rarotonga, the main island of the Cooks, and educated at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He published six collections of poems in the English and Rarotongan languages. When Kauraka died in 1997, he was buried on the atoll of Manihiki, northern Cooks. He was the brother of artist and writer Tepaeru Tereora.
Nathaniel Lees is a New Zealand theatre actor and director and film actor of Samoan descent, best known for film roles in The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and for starring in Young Hercules as Chiron the centaur.
Sia Figiel is an American contemporary Samoan novelist, poet, and painter.
John Puhiatau Pule is a Niuean artist, novelist and poet. The Queensland Art Gallery describes him as "one of the Pacific's most significant artists".
Samoan literature can be divided into oral and written literatures, in the Samoan language and in English or English translation, and is from the Samoa Islands of independent Samoa and American Samoa, and Samoan writers in diaspora. Samoan as a written language emerged after 1830 when Tahitian and English missionaries from the London Missionary Society, working with Samoan chiefly orators, developed a Latin script based Samoan written language. Before this, there were logologo and tatau but no phonetic written form.
Shigeyuki "Yuki" Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist of Japanese and Samoan descent. In 2008, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it was the first time a New Zealander and the first time a Pacific Islander had a solo show at the institution. Titled Shigeyuki Kihara: Living Photographs, the exhibition opened from 7 October 2008 to 1 February 2009. Kihara's self-portrait photographs in the exhibitions included nudes in poses that portrayed colonial images of Polynesian people as sexual objects. Her exhibition was followed by an acquisition of Kihara's work for the museum's collection.
Karlo Estelle Mila is a New Zealand writer and poet of Tongan, Pālagi and Samoan descent. Her first collection, Dream Fish Floating, received the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2006 at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She has subsequently published two further poetry collections, A Well Written Body (2008) and Goddess Muscle (2020), the latter of which was longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry.
Robert Sullivan is a Māori poet, academic and editor. His published poetry collections include Jazz Waiata (1990), Star Waka (1999) and Shout Ha! to the Sky (2010). His books are postmodern, explore social and racial issues, and explore aspects of Māori culture and history.
The Peʻa is the popular name of the traditional male tatau (tattoo) of Samoa, also known as the malofie. It is a common mistake for people to refer to the pe'a as sogaimiti, because sogaimiti refers to the man with the pe'a and not the pe'a itself. It covers the body from the middle of the back to the knees, and consists of heavy black lines, arrows, and dots.
Kimo Armitage is a poet, children's book author, playwright and videographer from Hale'iwa, O'ahu, where his maternal grandparents raised him. Kimo apprenticed with poet and novelist Albert Wendt. He is an assistant professor at Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He won the 2016 Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award for Poetry. His first novel, The Healer, was published in 2016.
Serie Barford is a performance poet from Auckland, New Zealand.
Noeline Edith "Bub" Bridger was a New Zealand poet and short story writer and actor, who often performed her own work and drew inspiration from her Māori, Irish and English ancestry.
Audrey Teuki Teupuariki Tuioti Brown-Pereira is a Cook Islands diplomat, public servant, and poet, of Cook Islands, Maori and Samoan descent.
Selina Tusitala Marsh is a New Zealand poet, academic and illustrator, and was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2017–2019.
Momoe Malietoa Von Reiche is a Samoan poet, artist, sculptor, photographer.
Kelly Ana Morey is a novelist and poet from New Zealand.
Leilani Leafaitulagi Grace Tamu is a New Zealand poet and politician.
Lani Wendt Young is a Samoan–New Zealand writer, editor, publisher and journalist. She is the author of 15 books including the bestselling young adult series Telesa.
Alice Te Punga Somerville is a poet, scholar and irredentist. Dr Te Punga Somerville is the author of Once were Pacific: Māori connections to Oceania which provides the first critical analysis of the disconnections and connections between 'Māori' and 'Pacific'. Her research work delves into texts by Māori, Pacific and Indigenous peoples that tell Indigenous stories in order to go beyond the constraints of the limited stories told about them. In 2023 she won New Zealand's top award for poetry, the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, for her collection Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised.
