New Zealand Writers

KAWANA, Phil

A cool unsentimental eye, an affection for his Maoriness but an ability to stand back and appraise it, to understand it.

• Links

KAWANA, Phil (1965 - ) is a short story writer and poet whose work often follows the lives of young Maori characters drifting between urban and rural New Zealand.

Of Ngaruahine, Ngati Ruanui and Ngati Kahungunu descent, Kawana was born and raised in Taranaki. At the age of seven he realised that a recently deceased friend of the family, 'Uncle Ron', was author Ronald Hugh Morrieson, and discovered 'that real people can write books.'

Kawana's poetry had appeared in Kapiti Poems and a short story had appeared in Sport before he won the Te Kaunihera Maori Award for best short story in English by a previously published Maori writer in the inaugural Huia Short Story Awards in 1995. He won the category again in 1997.

Dead Jazz Guys (1999) is Kawana's first collection of short stories. Gordon McLauchlan writes in the New Zealand Herald, 'What stamps him as modern... is not the affected brashness, nor the show-off verbal pyrotechnics of so many of his Pakeha contemporaries, but a cool unsentimental eye, an affection for his Maoriness but an ability to stand back and appraise it, to understand it.'

Phil Kawana has appeared at numerous literary festivals and events, in schools, and on radio and television profiles. Many of his stories have been broadcast on National Radio.

In 1999 Kawana published a collection of short stories and poetry, Attack of the Skunk People.

(KC.)

Updated Information

A small selection of Phil Kawana's poems appeared in the prizewinning Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan, (Auckland University Press, 2003).

Kawana's first poetry collection, The Devil in My Shoes, was published by Auckland University Press in 2005.