This Compulsion In Us (personal essays)
Published by Te Herenga Waka University Press on May 8, 2025
Tina Makereti
ANZL Member
Tina Makereti writes novels, essays and short stories. In 2016, her short story, ‘Black Milk’, won the Pacific Regional Commonwealth Short Story Prize and in 2017, Makereti co-edited an anthology of Māori & Pasifika fiction, Black Marks on the White Page, with Witi Ihimaera. Makereti’s first novel, Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (Vintage NZ, 2014) has been described as ‘a remarkable [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 and won the 2014 Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Award for Fiction, also won by her short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (Huia, 2011). Her novel, The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, tells the tale of a young Māori man who is exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in 1846 and was longlisted for the 2019 Ockham NZ Book Award.
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In 2009 Tina was the recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing (Non-fiction) and the Pikihuia Award for Best Short Story Written in English. She has presented her work all over New Zealand and in Frankfurt, Taipei, Jamaica, Toronto and the UK. Tina has a PhD Creative Writing from Victoria University, and teaches creative writing at Massey University. She is of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Ati Awa, Ngāti Rangatahi, Pākehā and, according to family stories, Moriori descent.
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Tina’s latest work The Mires (2024) is a tender and fierce novel that asks what we do when faced with things we don’t understand. Is our impulse to destroy or connect? The Mires was shortlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
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Tina’s forthcoming This Compulsion In Us (Te Herenga Waka University Press, May 2025) is her first book of nonfiction, where Tina writes from inside her many intersecting lives as a wahine Māori – teacher, daughter, traveller, parent – and into a past that is as alive and changeful as the present moment. In these frank and moving essays she asks: What if we could transform the events that made us who we are? What if there were a way back to the beginning? By turns lyrical, personal and critical, This Compulsion In Us is many things all at once, and an unforgettable portrait of one of Aotearoa’s foremost storytellers.
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International rights to Tina’s work are currently available through Charlotte Seymour at Nurnberg Associates: CSeymour@nurnberg.co.uk
Links
Tina Makereti’s website
Twitter:@tinamakereti
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page
Random House Books NZ author page
Radio NZ interview discussing The Mires (July, 2024)
Spinoff review of The Mires (July, 2024)
Radio NZ interview with Tina on The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke (2018)
Auckland Writers Festival University of Auckland public lecture ‘Poutokomanawa – The Heartpost’ (2017)
Short story ‘Black Milk’ in Granta magazine (Winner: Pacific Regional Commonwealth Short Story Prize, 2016)
NZ Listener review of Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (2014)
New releases by Tina Makereti
The Mires (fiction)
Published by Ultimo Press on July 3, 2024
Bibliography: Tina Makereti
Fiction
The Mires (Ultimo Press, 2024)
The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke (Random House NZ: Vintage, 2018)
Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (Random House, 2014)
Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (Huia Publishers, 2010)
Creative Nonfiction
This Compulsion In Us (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2025)
Journals
‘Monster’ in Overland Aotearoa / New Zealand edition (2015)
‘This Compulsion in Us’ [Essay] in Landfall 229 (2015)
‘Frau Amsel’s Cupboard’ in Sport 42 (2014)
‘Tauihu: to a carved canoe prow…’ [Essay] in Five Dials (2014)
‘Taonga’ in Metro (Jan-Feb, 2012)
‘An Englishman, an Irishman & a Welshman walk into a Pa’ [Essay] in Sport 40 (2012)
‘Beth’ in The Dominion Post Your Weekend (2011)
‘Gravity’ in Hue & Cry 5 (2011)
‘Gods and Ghosts’ [Essay] in Hue & Cry 4 (2010)
‘Twitch’ [Essay] in New Zealand Listener (2010)
‘In the End’, JAAM 27 (2009)
‘Topknot’ & ‘Ahi’, Turbine 08 (2008)
Anthologies
‘This Compulsion in Us’ in Tell You What II (Essay: Auckland UP, 2015)
‘He Taonga te Reo’ in Tell You What (Essay: Auckland UP, 2014)
‘skin and bones’ in The AUP Anthology of NZ Literature (Auckland UP, 2012)
‘Haut und Knochen’ in Ein Anderes Land (dtv, Germany, 2012)
‘shapeshifter’ in Tales for Canterbury (Random Static, 2011)
‘skin and bones’ Huia Short Stories 8 (Huia Publishers, 2009)
Editor
Black Marks on the White Page (with Witi Ihimaera: Random House NZ: Vintage, 2017)
'Many of our best stories profit from a meeting of New Zealand and overseas influences' - Owen Marshall