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Keri Hulme, New Zealand's first Booker Prize winner, dies aged 74
Keri Hulme, the first New Zealander to win the Booker Prize, has died aged 74 after battling ongoing health conditions.
The novelist and poet died shortly before noon on 27th December, at her home in Waimate, South Canterbury.
Hulme won the Booker for her debut novel The Bone People, which tells the story of Kerewin Holmes, an artist of Māori heritage trying to escape her past. Prior to its publication by independent feminist press Spiral, the manuscript was turned down by many publishers.
Its first print run produced 2,000 copies, which grew to more than one million following its 1984 win of New Zealand's Pegasus Prize and the 1985 Booker victory. Hulme did not attend the Booker awards ceremony because she was certain she would not win, and had to be
Paying tribute, author and fellow Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo tweeted that The Bone People was one of her "all-time favourite books". She said: "Booker-winner 1985 but the critics were dismissive; she didn't belong to their literary club. It was an outsider story told by an outsider in an outsider way. So long, Keri Hulme, you inspired me."
Hulme was born in Christchurch in 1947, the eldest of six children. "It was never about fame for her, she’s always been a storyteller," said her nephew Matthew Salmons, speaking to New Zealand magazine Stuff. "It was never about the glitz and glam, she just had stories to share."
“She gave us as a family the greatest gift of all, which would be reconnecting us with our Whakapapa Māori and reigniting that passion for our history, our people that had been lost over a couple of generations."
Hulme also published Te Kaihau/The Windeater (UQP), a collection of short stories, and the poetry books Lost Possessions (Victoria University Press) and Strands (Auckland University Press). Stonefish, her most recent collection of short stories, was published by Bay Foreign Languages Books.
