Emma receives the Wai Toi-o-Moroki Award funded by Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu.

Emma Hislop’s first book of short fiction, Ruin, was published in March 2023 with Te Herenga Waka University Press and longlisted for the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She has a Masters in Creative Writing. In 2023 she was awarded the Michael King International Residency at Varuna House. Emma is part of Te Hā Taranaki, a collective for Māori writers, established in 2019. She is currently working on a novel.

Emma will be mentored by 2005 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Icon Patricia Grace DCNZM QSO.

Patricia Grace is a major Aotearoa New Zealand novelist, short story writer and children’s writer. She is of Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa and Te Āti Awa descent, and is affiliated to Ngāti Porou by marriage. Grace began writing early, whilst teaching and raising her family of seven children. She has since won many national and international awards, including the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for fiction, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (widely considered the most prestigious literary prize after the Nobel). A deeply subtle, moving and subversive writer, in 2007 Grace received a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature.