Award-winning Māori writer Tina Makereti has been named the 2026 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, earning one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most prestigious literary honours and the opportunity to spend three months writing in southern France.
Makereti, of Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore descent, will receive a $43,000 grant supporting travel, insurance, accommodation and living costs during her residency in Menton.
The fellowship will also give her access to the writing room beneath the terrace of Villa Isola Bella, where celebrated New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield lived and worked during 1919 and 1920.
TIME AND SPACE TO CREATE
For Makereti, the fellowship provides something increasingly difficult for writers to secure — dedicated time away from everyday work to concentrate on creating something new.
She says receiving the fellowship has already influenced the direction of her next project, allowing her to step away from teaching and devote herself to writing.
The Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship Advisory Committee says Makereti was selected for her ability to move confidently between fiction and nonfiction and for the distinctive voice and curiosity she brings to her work.
ANOTHER MAJOR HONOUR AFTER OCKHAM WIN
The announcement follows an extraordinary period for Makereti.
Her personal essay collection This Compulsion in Us won the 2026 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards General Nonfiction Award, while her third novel The Mires was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction in 2025.
Her previous books include The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings and Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa.
Her essay Lumpectomy won the Landfall Essay Competition in 2022, while Black Milk won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the Pacific region in 2016.
Makereti also co-edited Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology celebrating Māori and Pasifika writing, alongside literary giant Witi Ihimaera.
Ihimaera himself received the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1999 and this year became an Arts Foundation Icon Whakamana Hiranga.
MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY OF SUPPORTING KIWI WRITERS
Established in 1970, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship has helped generations of New Zealand writers step away from their normal lives and immerse themselves in their craft.
The fellowship is open across fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, children’s literature and playwriting and is described by the Arts Foundation as the only privately funded international literary fellowship in Aotearoa.
Its distinguished list of previous recipients includes Witi Ihimaera, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Paula Morris, Dame Fiona Kidman, Elizabeth Knox, Lloyd Jones, Michael King and Allen Curnow.
Makereti currently teaches a Master of Arts in Creative Writing workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington.
Her selection adds another Māori voice to the distinguished whakapapa of writers who have travelled from Aotearoa to Menton.
For Makereti, the next chapter will be written thousands of kilometres from home — but with the stories, whakapapa and creative voice of Aotearoa travelling with her.
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