Dr Tina Makereti

Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) writes fiction and creative nonfiction that considers questions around cultural identity, history, prejudice and coloniality in Aotearoa. She has a strong interest in writing that explores unknowability and the uncanny. She is the author of a short story collection and three novels, most recently The Mires (Ultimo Press 2024), published in the UK (Footnote Press) and US (HarperVia) in 2025 and shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction 2025. Her essay collection, This Compulsion in Us, was also published by Te Herenga Waka Press in 2025 and won the General Nonfiction Award at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2026.

Makereti's essay 'Lumpectomy' won the Landfall Essay Prize in 2022. In 2016, her short story 'Black Milk' won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Pacific Region. Her 2018 novel, The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award. Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (Vintage, 2014), Makereti's first novel, was a bestseller for six months, and has been described as a New Zealand classic and ‘a remarkable first [book that] spans generations of Moriori, Māori and Pākehā descendants as they grapple with a legacy of pacifism, violent domination and cross-cultural dilemmas.’ It was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016 and won the 2014 Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Award for Fiction. Her short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (Huia Publishers, 2010), which combines mythological and contemporary stories, also won the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Award for Fiction in 2011. 

Alongside Witi Ihimaera, Makereti is editor of an anthology of Māori and Pasifika fiction, Black Marks on the White Page (Vintage, 2017). She has curated exhibitions on social and cultural history at Wellington Museum, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision and the Courtenay Place Light boxes, and been guest curator for Verb Festival and Auckland Writers Festival. At the Auckland Writers Festival Free Public Lecture in 2017, Makereti advocated for a more rich and representative house of New Zealand literature, which continues to be the goal of much of her research, teaching and writing. She has spoken about her writing and Māori literature throughout New Zealand and in London, Edinburgh, Jamaica, Toronto, Taiwan and Frankfurt.

In 2022, Makereti was Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at The University of Canterbury. She has also held residencies at the Michael King Writers Centre in Auckland, Randell Cottage, Wellington, and Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt.