Paula Morris (Ngati Wai, Ngati Whatua) was born in Auckland, and has spent much of her adult life in the UK or the US. Her short fiction has been widely anthologised and her first story collection, Forbidden Cities (2008), was a regional finalist for the Commonwealth Prize. In her stories, wrote Kirsty Gunn, Morris ‘slips effortlessly and naturally across time zones and hemispheres, criss-crossing themes of race and culture with a cool, knowing style and claiming an ethnic territory that’s all her own.’

Her eight novels include Queen of Beauty (2002), winner of the Hubert Church First Book Prize at the 2003 Montana NZ Book Awards, a narrative of interwoven stories spanning three generations of a large Maori family. Hibiscus Coast (2005) is an art-world thriller set in Auckland and Shanghai. Lydia Wevers, writing in the Listener, said: ‘Not only is Morris a seriously good writer – the tone doesn’t jar, the characters are satisfyingly complex, and there is an interesting reflection of the way we are now – she can also deliver entertainment … Like Dickens, she can tell a great story but also “catch” the world we live in, with all its complications and ambiguities’.

Rangatira (2011), fiction winner at the 2012 NZ Post Book Awards and Nga Kupu Ora Maori Book Awards, was based on the true story of an 1863 visit to England by a group of Maori, and described as ‘a triumph of characterisation’ (Listener) and an ‘extraordinary literary achievement and probably the best of recent New Zealand historical novels’ (New Zealand Books).

Paula was appointed Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to literature in the 2019 New Years Honours List. This same year she was the recipient of the prestigious Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. She spent the first half of 2019 in France on various projects including journal articles based on her work for the Creative Research Initiative; a play set in France in 1925 drawing on the true story of the writer Jean Rhys working as a ‘ghost’ for Rudolph Valentino’s mother-in-law; and research towards a major non-fiction project, about islands, ports and exiles.

False River (Penguin Random House, 2017) is a diverse collection of fiction and nonfiction pieces that range the world—from America to Antwerp to Aotearoa—and subjects, including Laura Ingalls Wilder, Billy the Kid, Robert Johnson and Hurricane Katrina.

Paula’s nonfiction includes two long-form essays: On Coming Home (Bridget Williams Books, 2015) and Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde (Massey University Press, 2020), a collaboration with photographer Haru Sameshima that was longlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. With Michelle Elvy and James Norcliffe Paula co-edited the acclaimed anthology Ko Aotearoa Tātou (Otago University Press, 2019); with Alison Wong she co-edited A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa NZ (Auckland University Press, 2020), the first-ever anthology of Asian NZ writing.

 

Links

Visit Paula’s website

Paula’s blog is ‘Trendy But Casual’

Paula on Twitter

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Wikipedia

Auckland University staff profile

Penguin Books author page

Bridget Williams Books (BWB) author page

ANZL review of A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (May, 2021)

ANZL review of Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde (Nov, 2020)

ANZL review of Ko Aotearoa Tātou: We Are New Zealand (Nov, 2020)

Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship media release (Dec, 2018)

NZ Listener interview discussing On Coming Home (May, 2015)

NZ Herald interview (Feb, 2015)

Stuff.co.nz [Dominion Post] interview (June, 2015)

NZ Listener interview discussing Rangatira (July, 2012)

Radio New Zealand interview (June, 2012)