Whiti Hereaka is an award-winning novelist and playwright of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Tumatawera, Tainui and Pākehā descent, based in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. She holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing (Scriptwriting) from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington. Whiti has written four critically-acclaimed novels, The Graphologist’s Apprentice (2010), Bugs (2013), Legacy (2018) and Kurangaituku (2021). She also co-edited with Witi Ihimaera an anthology of Māori myths, Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers (2019). Whiti is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University and is also a board member of the Māori Literature Trust, Michael King Writers Trust and Playmarket. We are so excited to host her this year in both the LitCrawl and Te Hā streams of Verb Festival.

Verb Festival 2022 appearances:
Radical Possibility of Ignoring Genre, Sat 5 Nov, 6pm (LitCrawl).
Whai kupu, Whai Kākahu, Sat 5 Nov, 8:30pm (LitCrawl).

Read Whiti’s brilliant essay, Knot Worthy, on Verb here.