Christina Thompson

Last updated

Christina Thompson
Born
Switzerland
CitizenshipAustralia and United States

Christina Thompson is best known for her book Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, which won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Nonfiction. [1]

Contents

Career

Christina Thompson was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, and grew up outside of Boston. She received her bachelor's degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa, from Dartmouth College [2] in 1981 and her Ph.D. in English from University of Melbourne in 1990. [3] From 1994 to 1998 she was editor of Meanjin, one of Australia's leading literary journals. [4]

The editor of Harvard Review since 2000, [5] she teaches in the Writing Program at Harvard University Extension, [6] where she was awarded the James E. Conway Teaching Writing Award in 2008.

Her first book, a memoir called Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, was published in July 2008 by Bloomsbury USA . The story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Māori of New Zealand, [7] it was a finalist for the 2009 NSW Premier's Literary Award and the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. [8]

Her second book, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, is a history of Polynesian voyaging. Published March 12, 2019 by Harper, it won the 2020 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Nonfiction, [9] the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Award, [10] and the 2019 New South Wales Premier's History Awards, and was a finalist for the 2020 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, [11] the 2019 Mountbatten Maritime Award, the 2019 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award [12] and the 2019 Queensland Literary Award. [13]

Her awards and fellowships include a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, [14] a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and grants from Australia Council, Arts Victoria, the Institute of International Education, and the Australian Federation of University Women.

She is married to Tauwhitu Parangi, a member of the Ngāti Rēhia hapu of the Ngāpuhi iwi of Aotearoa/New Zealand, with whom she has three sons.

Bibliography

Books

Articles

Related Research Articles

The Phi Beta Kappa Society (ΦΒΚ) is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, in December 1776. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and to induct outstanding students of arts and sciences at select American colleges and universities. Since its inception, its inducted members include 17 United States presidents, 42 United States Supreme Court justices, and 136 Nobel laureates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phi Theta Kappa</span> Community college honor society

Phi Theta Kappa is an honor society for students of associate degree-granting colleges. Its headquarters are in Jackson, Mississippi and it has more than 4.3 million members in nearly 1,300 chapters in eleven nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Cole</span> American poet

Henri Cole is an American poet, who has published many collections of poetry and a memoir. His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alpha Sigma Phi</span> North American collegiate fraternity

Alpha Sigma Phi (ΑΣΦ), commonly known as Alpha Sig, is an intercollegiate men's social fraternity with 181 active chapters and provisional chapters. Founded at Yale in 1845, it is the 10th oldest Greek letter fraternity in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wofford College</span> Private college in Spartanburg, South Carolina, U.S.

Wofford College is a private residential liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1854, it is one of the few four-year institutions in the southeastern United States founded before the American Civil War that still operates on its original campus. The 175-acre (71 ha) campus is a national arboretum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phi Mu</span> American collegiate sorority

Phi Mu (ΦΜ) is the second oldest female fraternal organization established in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Friedrich</span> American food company founder

Bruce Gregory Friedrich is co-founder and president of The Good Food Institute (GFI), a Y Combinator funded non-profit that promotes plant- and cultivated meat alternatives to conventional animal meat. He is also a co-founder of the alternative protein venture capital firm New Crop Capital. Friedrich previously worked for PETA and Farm Sanctuary.

Joseph Epstein is an American writer who was the editor of the magazine The American Scholar from 1975 to 1997. His essays and stories have appeared in books and other publications.

Leah Price is an American literary critic who specializes in the British novel and in the history of the book. She is Henry Rutgers Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Rutgers University and founding director of the Rutgers Initiative for the Book. She has written essays on old and new media for The New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, The Paris Review, and The Boston Globe.

The Ralph Waldo Emerson Award is a non-fiction literary award given by the Phi Beta Kappa society, the oldest academic society of the United States, for books that have made the most significant contributions to the humanities. Albert William Levi won the first of these awards, in 1960.

Allison Blakely is an academic historian.

The expansion of Greek letter organizations into Canada was an important stage of the North American fraternity movement, beginning in 1879 with the establishment of a chapter of Zeta Psi at the University of Toronto. In 1883, the same fraternity established a chapter at McGill University. Other early foundations were Kappa Alpha Society at Toronto in 1892 and at McGill in 1899, and Alpha Delta Phi at Toronto in 1893 and at McGill in 1897. The first sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, was established in Toronto in 1887. In 1902, the first international chapter of Phi Delta Theta was established at McGill University as the Quebec Alpha.

Francis Edward Su is an American mathematician. He joined the Harvey Mudd College faculty in 1996, and is currently Benediktsson-Karwa Professor of Mathematics. Su served as president of the Mathematical Association of America from 2015–2017 and is serving as a Vice President of the American Mathematical Society from 2020-2023. Su has received multiple awards from the MAA, including the Henry L. Alder Award and a Deborah and Franklin Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, both for distinguished teaching. He was also a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar during the 2019-2020 term. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, in the 2025 class of fellows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Louis Gates Jr.</span> American literary critic, professor and historian (born 1950)

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon.

Ruth Franklin is an American literary critic. She is a former editor at The New Republic and an Adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her first biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2016.

References

  1. Office for the Arts, Department of Infrastructure (10 December 2020). "2020 winners announced today #PMLitAwards". www.arts.gov.au. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  2. "Christina Thompson". AustLit: Discover Australian Stories. Archived from the original on 16 March 2017. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  3. Thompson, Christina Abbott (1990), The paradigm journey to the paradigm elsewhere: Studies in South Pacific romance , retrieved 19 May 2021
  4. "Christina Thompson". LinkedIn .
  5. "About". Harvard Review. Archived from the original on 22 April 2019. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  6. "Christina Thompson". Harvard University. Archived from the original on 4 September 2016. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  7. "Come on shore and we will kill and eat you all: An Unlikely Love Story by Christina Thompson". The Times . ISSN   0140-0460 . Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  8. ""Q&A With Christina Thompson"". ReadMoreCO. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  9. Lewis, Kathryn (10 December 2020). "'I was tired of being told where I belong': Poet's big literary award". The Canberra Times. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  10. "Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2020". The Wheeler Centre. Archived from the original on 4 March 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  11. "Phi Beta Kappa Book Awards Shortlist - PBK". The Phi Beta Kappa Society. 17 May 2021. Archived from the original on 1 October 2020.
  12. "SONWA". Northland College. Archived from the original on 15 April 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  13. "Queensland Literary Awards 2019 shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 1 October 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
  14. "National Endowment for the Humanities Announces $1.7 Million for Public Scholars". The National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  15. McCulloch, Alison (20 July 2008). "I Married a Maori". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  16. Stead, C. K. (15 August 2008). "Review: Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All by Christina Thompson". the Guardian. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  17. "'Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All' by Christina Thompson". The Monthly. 2 September 2008. Archived from the original on 18 May 2021. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  18. Rosenbloom, Joseph. "A tale of love and exploration". Boston.com. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  19. COME ON SHORE AND WE WILL KILL AND EAT YOU... | Kirkus Reviews.
  20. Conniff, Richard (15 March 2019). "'Sea People' Review: The Globe's Greatest Explorers". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  21. "'Sea People' Examines The Origins And History Of Polynesia". NPR.org. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  22. Winchester, Simon (14 May 2019). "How Was Polynesia Populated? Two New Books Explore the Pacific's Mysteries". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  23. "'Sea People' Examines The Origins And History Of Polynesia". KPBS Public Media. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
  24. Upchurch, Michael (4 April 2019). "How one people came to inhabit 10 million square miles of the Pacific". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 8 April 2019. Retrieved 18 May 2021.