Whiti Hereaka

Whiti Hereaka is an award-winning novelist and playwright of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Tumatawera, Tainui and Pākehā descent, based in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. She holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing (Scriptwriting) from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. Since her authorial debut, Whiti has written four critically-acclaimed novels, The Graphologist’s Apprentice (2010), Bugs (2013), Legacy (2018) and Kurangaituku (2021). She also co-edited, with Witi Ihimaera, an anthology of Māori myths, Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers (2019). Whiti is a valued presence in a variety of institutions in Aotearoa. She has worked as a script writer for radio and television, taught Writing for the Young at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters and is now a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University. She is also a board member of the Māori Literature Trust, Michael King Writers Trust and Playmarket. As part of the 2012 cohort of Te Papa Tupu, an incubator programme for emerging Māori writers, Whiti developed her novel Bugs. Since then, she has been an active mentor and judge on the programme and held a number of local residencies, including Randell Cottage and both the Michael King Writers Centre Summer and Māori residencies, and she was the 2021 NZSA Beatson Fellow. Whiti’s writing abilities have also been recognised on an international level, resulting in residency opportunities in the USA as part of the prestigious University of Iowa International Writing Program, 2013; in China at Sun Yat-sen University, 2018; and in Roxby Downs, South Australia Writers, 2019. In 2012, Whiti was the recipient of the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award, recognising the work of an outstanding emerging New Zealand playwright. Her play Rewena, conceived during her residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in 2012, has been performed on various stages in New Zealand and was published in the anthology Here/Now in 2015.