Briar Grace-Smith

Profile
Briar Grace-Smith is a playwright and short story writer. She is known for her playful weaving of Māori mythology into contemporary settings, her down-to-earth humour and her sharp observation of New Zealand’s people and culture.

Selected published works
; Ngā Pou Wāhine, 1997; Purapurawhetu, 1999; When Sun and Moon Collide, 2008.

Publishers
Huia Publishers www.huia.co.nz

Biography
Briar Grace-Smith is of Ngā Puhi ancestry. She began her career by writing and acting with the Māori theatre companies Te Ohu Whakaari and He Ara Hou. In 1995 she wrote her first play, Ngā Pou Wāhine, which won the coveted Peter Harcourt Award for best short play at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. That same year Grace-Smith won the Bruce Mason Playwrighting Award.

She has gone on to write numerous plays, including Purapurawhetu (Best New New Zealand Play, 1997 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards), The Sojourns of Boy (with Jo Randerson), Haruru Mai for the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts 2000, Potiki’s Memory of Stone for The Court Theatre, Christchurch, in 2003 and 100 Cousins for Massive Theatre Company, Auckland, 2006.

Grace-Smith’s short stories have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand and published in anthologies such as Toi Wāhine (1995), Huia Short Stories (1995), Penguin New Writers (1998), and Tāngata, Tāngata (1999).

Her first screen play The Strength of Water goes into production in August 2007.

Grace-Smith was writer-in-residence at Massey University in 1998 and at Victoria University of Wellington in 2003. In 2000, she was the recipient of an Arts Foundation Laureate Award. Theatre commentator and Arts Foundation panel member Sunny Amey said of Grace-Smith at the awards ceremony: “She goes from strength to strength. She is worldly-wise with huge wairua [spirit] and a wicked sense of humour – all great ingredients for a writer.”

Grace-Smith is a licensed user of toi iho™, a registered trademark denoting authenticity and quality of Māori arts.