Fiction writer and artist Dr Terri Te Tau (Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne ki Wairarapa) has been appointed as the Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and Creative New Zealand Emerging Māori Writer in Residence for 2026.

Dr Te Tau is a member of the Mataaho Collective, a group of four artists whose large-scale art installations are based on contemporary Māori narratives and weaving practices. Their work won the prestigious Golden Lion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Mataaho are Arts Foundation Laureates and winners of the 2021 Walters Art Prize.

Dr Te Tau’s research is centred around connections between indigenous knowledge systems, science, speculative fiction and the environment. She completed a PhD in Creative Arts from Massey University in 2015 before becoming a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre of Culture-Centred Approach to Research and Evaluation at Massey University. Since then, she has worked as a teacher and as a curriculum writer and designer for NZQA on Māori Visual Arts.

Her writings on art have appeared in a range of publications. As a fiction writer, Dr Te Tau’s short story Hīkoi Whetū won the Emerging Māori category of the Sunday Star Times short story competition in 2024. Her work was also anthologised in Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction 2021. She was chosen for the Te Papa Tupu - Emerging Māori Writers mentorship programme in 2016.

During her three-month residency at the IIML, Dr Te Tau will work on a novel based around the harakeke trade of the 1800s, and the relocations and relationships that emerged from the changing economy. She will explore how harakeke initiates space for inter-personal relationships and imagine how this might continue to develop into the future. Dr Te Tau’s first novel, a speculative and historical fiction titled The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances, is scheduled to be published with Spoor Books in 2026.

Director of the IIML, Damien Wilkins, says, “Terri’s celebrated work as part of the Mataaho Collective turns out to be only one aspect of her creativity. The selection panel was bowled over by her fiction. She’s a writer to watch!”

Commenting on the appointment, Dr Te Tau says, “It’s a gift and an honour to have the opportunity to spend three months immersed within the writing community at the IIML. I’m looking forward to spending time with my writing mentor and getting to know other writers at Victoria University. Two of my kids will be at Te Herenga Waka so I’m also looking forward to embarrassing them when I see them around campus.”

She takes up the residency at the IIML in March 2026.