CK Stead

“CK Stead is challenging, fun, urbane and brilliant. Read him,” says The Spectator. We concur and add: “Come meet him in Marlborough.”

The distinguished, award-winning novelist, poet and essayist is also well-known as a critic of New Zealand literature. CK Stead’s major novels include Smith’s Dream, All Visitors Ashore, My Name Was Judas, Mansfield, Talking About O’Dwyer, The Singing Whakapapa and The Secret History of Modernism.

As an aspiring poet, he was a protégé of Frank Sargeson and Allen Curnow. An academic, CK has an international reputation as an expert on 20th century poetic Modernism. He was Professor of English at the University of Auckland from 1967 to 1986 when he stopped teaching to write full time. He is still Professor Emeritus.  CK is the current New Zealand Poet Laureate and has won the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction. He is also a Member of the Order of New Zealand, our highest honour.

CK lives in Auckland with his wife Kay. Their daughter Charlotte Grimshaw was a guest author at last year’s Marlborough Book Festival.

“Gathered from throughout Stead’s career, these stories are a reminder of his deft storytelling and literary power. They are clever, sensual, wry and beautifully written, with Stead’s subtle sense of humour evident at every turn.” - Allen and Unwin

“C.K. Stead’s Collected Poems deserves to be seen as an important contribution to the literature of the English speaking world. His talent is more than ambidextrous. To excel as a poet, novelist and critic is rarer than we tend to think, and Karl Stead has managed it.” - Karl Miller, Founding Editor of the London Review of Books

For more info, read CK's bio on the New Zealand Book Council website, article on Stuff, The Guardian article and The New Zealand Herald 12 Questions 2013.

Photo credit: Marti Friedlander