Keri Hulme is of Maori, Scottish, and English ancestry and grew up in Christchurch and Moeraki, New Zealand. She has worked as a fish-'n'-chip cook, tobacco picker, woolen mill winder, census taker, journalist, postmistress, and television director. In 1983 she became a full-time writer. Through a government lottery, she won a plot of land on a remote Westland coast, where she erected an octagonal-shaped dwelling and settled in. She writes, paints, and fishes and has published seven books.
