Albert Wendt

Albert Wendt is a Samoan poet, novelist, playwright, artist, scholar, and educator. He has published more than a dozen novels and short story collections that explore many different themes in genres. He edited several anthologies of Pacific literature, including Lali (1980) and Nuanua (1995) and coedited (with Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan) Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (2003) and Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (2010). His poetry collections include Inside Us the Dead: Poems 1961 to 1974 (1976), Photographs (1995), The Book of the Black Star (2002), Adventure of Vela (2009), and From Mānoa to a Ponsonby Garden (2012). Wendt has taught at Samoa College, the University of the South Pacific, the University of Hawaiʻi, and the University of Auckland. He has been the recipient of many awards throughout his illustrious career; in 2013, he became a member of the Order of New Zealand, the highest possible honor in New Zealand.