Patricia Grace is one of New Zealand’s most prominent and celebrated Maori fiction authors and a figurehead of modern New Zealand literature. She garnered initial acclaim in the 1970s with her collection of short stories entitled Waiariki – the first published book by a Maori woman in New Zealand. She has published six novels and seven short story collections, as well as a number of books for children and a work of non-fiction.

She won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for Potiki, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which also won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize.