Tina Makereti

Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) is the author of three acclaimed novels: Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings, The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, and most recently The Mires, which was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. This was followed by her collection of essays, This Compulsion In Us, published in 2025.

In 2022, her essay ‘Lumpectomy’ won the Landfall Essay Prize, and in 2016, her short story ‘Black Milk’ won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Pacific Region. Her first novel 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, in 2011.

Alongside Witi Ihimaera, she co-edited Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology that celebrates Māori and Pasifika writing.

Tina teaches a Master of Arts in Creative Writing workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters.

Instagram
Find Tina’s books at UBS – University Bookshop Canterbury.

Image: Ebony Lamb