The Bone People

Keri Hulme (1947-2021) was a New Zealand novelist, poet, and short story writer of mixed Māori (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe), Scots, and English descent, best known for her debut novel the bone people (1984), which won the Booker Prize in 1985—the first for a New Zealander and a debut novel—as well as the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and Pegasus Award for Māori Literature. Her works explore themes of isolation, multicultural identity, and Māori mythology. She published poetry collections like The Silences Between (1982) and short story collections like Te Kaihau / The Windeater (1986), and lived much of her life in remote Ōkārito before dying from dementia.