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C.K. Stead


C.K. Stead is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland. In 2007 he was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand.

He is the author of more than 30 books, including The Singing Whakapapa (1994, winner of the fiction section of the New Zealand Book Awards). His novels are published in New Zealand and the UK, and have been translated into several European languages. His book on 20th century modernism, The New Poetic (1964), was for many years a standard text in British universities, and has recently appeared in a new edition from Continuum. His most recent critical books are The Writer at Work (2000), and Kin of Place: Essays on 20 New Zealand Writers (2002). His novel Smith's Dream became Roger Donaldson's first feature film, Sleeping Dogs, and Sam Neill's first movie role. He has won a number of literary prizes, including the Katherine Mansfield prize for the short story, the Jessie McKay Award for poetry, and the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship. He was awarded a CBE in 1985 for services to New Zealand literature, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995, Senior Visiting Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford in 1997, and Fellow of the English Association in 2003. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by the University of Bristol in 2001, and won the Kings Lynn Poetry Award in 2002. His most recent book is the vast Collected Poems, 1951-2006 (2009).