Patea Boy - Life in Small Town Aotearoa

Airana Ngarewa’s debut novel The Bone Tree held the top New Zealand fiction spot for 11 weeks. It is the troubled tale of two young brothers embarking on a journey to find their family’s past while battling against a background of violence, loss, and authorities. Now he has a new book – Pātea Boys - a bilingual collection of stories about growing up in Pātea. It includes stories of sneaking away during school Cross Country, crashing a car at age four, peeling spuds on the marae and learning to live by the tikanga ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. Airana features in conversation with Emma Wehipeihana.

Airana Ngarewa (Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Rauru, Ngāruahine) is a former cage fighter, a teacher who hated school when he was a student, and now a novelist. He was born and raised in Patea, but despite the town’s Poi E fame, it is said his whanau is the only whanau from the area who cannot sing. Now living in New Plymouth, Airana writes about Māori affairs for The Spinoff and has been published by RNZ, NZ Herald, Newsroom and Landfall. He won the short story and poetry competitions at the Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards in 2022.

Dr Emma Wehipeihana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and political commentator. Her podcast on Māori health equity, Getting Better: A Year in the Life of a Māori Medical Student won the Voyager Best Narrative Podcast of the Year in 2021. In 2020 she won the Opinion Writer of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards, and her work has featured on Newsroom, Stuff, The Guardian, NZ Herald, and in academic and literary journals and books. Emma lives in Auckland, where she works at Middlemore Hospital as a surgical registrar.