Christian Karlson "Karl" SteadONZCBE (born 17 October 1932) is a New Zealand writer whose works include novels, poetry, short stories, and literary criticism.[2] He is one of New Zealand's most well-known and internationally celebrated writers.[3]
Early life and education
Stead was born in
Auckland in 1932. He attended
Mount Albert Grammar School.[4] He has said that growing up he rarely read New Zealand writers: "I read a few New Zealand writers at school but mainly it was a British education so one read British writers really".[2] Stead began writing poetry at about age 14 when he read a copy of the collected works of
Rupert Brooke, sent by his sister's penpal in England.[2]
Stead graduated from the
University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Arts in 1954, and earned his Masters of Arts the following year.[5] At this time he and his wife were neighbours with short-story writer
Frank Sargeson. Writer
Janet Frame was living in a hut in Sargeson's garden, having recently been discharged after nine years in a mental hospital. Frame later wrote about this time in her memoir An Angel at My Table, and Stead covered the same period in his autobiographical novel All Visitors Ashore (1984).[6]
Academic and literary career
Stead completed his
PhD at the
University of Bristol in 1961.[5] From 1959 to 1986, Stead taught at the University of Auckland, becoming the Professor of English in 1968.[5] In 1964, Stead published his first book, The New Poetic (1964), based on his PhD study of
W. B. Yeats,
Ezra Pound,
T.S. Eliot and the Georgian poets. It went on to sell over 100,000 copies.[6] His first book of poems, Whether the Will Is Free: Poems 1954–62, was published in the same year.[5]
Stead's first novel, Smith's Dream, about a war similar to the
Vietnam War in New Zealand, was published in 1971.[6] Stead was an opponent of the Vietnam War.[6]Smith's Dream provided the basis for the film Sleeping Dogs, starring
Sam Neill, which became the first New Zealand film released in the United States.
In the 1980s, Stead's writings about
Māori rights and
feminism became the subject of some criticism.[6] For example, in an article published in the London Review of Books in December 1986, he wrote that the representation of New Zealand history by
Witi Ihimaera in his novel The Matriarch (1986) was inaccurate "insofar as it ascribes conscious and malicious intent to the Pakeha and unwillingness to the Maori", and was highly critical of the novel.[7] In consequence his editorship of the Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories was boycotted by some writers, including
Keri Hulme, although Stead denied accusations of racism or being anti-Māori.[8] Stead was active in protests against the
1981 protest against Springboks and was part of the crowd that occupied the field at a game in Hamilton causing its cancellation.[9]
Stead retired from his position as the Professor of English at the University of Auckland in 1986 to write full time, after the success of his novel All Visitors Ashore (1984).[10] In the following two decades he wrote a string of internationally successful novels, and twice won the fiction section of the
New Zealand Book Awards with All Visitors Ashore and The Singing Whakapapa (1994).[10] Stead's historical novel Mansfield: A Novel, based on the life of the writer
Katherine Mansfield, was a finalist for the 2005 Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize and received commendation in the 2005
Commonwealth Writers Prize for the South East Asia and South Pacific region.[11]
Stead has continued to write and receive international accolades well into his seventies and eighties. In 2010 he won the inaugural
Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for his short story "Last Season's Man".[12][13] The short story was subject to some controversy, with literary commentator
Fergus Barrowman suggesting that it appeared to be a "revenge fantasy" about Stead's rivalry with younger writer
Nigel Cox, who had criticised Stead in a 1994 essay.[14] The story was reported on by UK satirical magazine Private Eye.[15] Stead in response has said that the story was a work of fiction.[16]
In August 2015, Stead was named the
New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2015 to 2017.[19] To celebrate the conclusion of Stead's term as Poet Laureate,[20] the
Alexander Turnbull Library published a signed, limited edition book of his work called In the Mirror, and Dancing. The little volume of poems was hand-pressed by Brendan O'Brien and illustrated with line sketches by New Zealand expatriate artist
Douglas MacDiarmid.[21] The book was launched on 8 August 2017 in Wellington, with the assistance of
Gregory O'Brien.[22]
Personal life
Stead and his wife Kay have three children.[16] His daughter
Charlotte Grimshaw is a well-known New Zealand writer.
^Stead, CK (2010). "Inaugural 2010 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine: Open International 1st Prize". Postgraduate Medical Journal. 87 (1023): 26.
doi:
10.1136/pgmj.2010.114199.
ISSN0032-5473.
S2CID219192254.;