Marianne Tremaine was born in Invercargill and was educated at Invercargill North School and James Hargest High School. She attended the University of Otago and graduated with an M.A. in English in 1967, and a Masters in Philosophy in 1969. In 1974 she graduated with a Diploma in Local Government Administration from Auckland University. She went to Training College and was a secondary school teacher at Auckland Girls Grammar in the early 1970s where she taught Drama, English and Social Studies. She then moved to the Centre for Continuing Education at Auckland University. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Cross Cultural Communication in the Business Studies Department of Massey University. Tremaine writes short stories and non-fiction papers and publications. She wrote a feature article in the Listener in 1974/75 about scraping the earth for subdivisions. She has published a number of articles in The Herald and would like to write a novel. She is an editor for Ashton Publishing Ltd, and for Trade Publications Ltd. She states: "Writing was what I was good at. I wrote poems and was always good at it at school. At the age of eight I was writing quite a lot." Every week she wrote a story for the children’s page of Southland Times and the Evening Star and won prizes each year from the ages of 11-13 for the person who had written the most. She adds: "My mother got me organized and I wrote all the time. My parents were very supportive in my writing." She attended Michael King’s workshops at Victoria.
Biographical sources
- Interviews with Marianne Tremaine: 19 August 1992, and Aug. 1998.
- Woman-Sight: A Collection of Stories. Ed. Suzann Olsson. Palmerston North, N.Z.: Nagare, 1989. 129.
Fiction
- "Behind the Lace Curtain." Thursday 1975. No further details.
- "Secrets." Marianne Tremaine. Climate 31: A Journal of New Zealand and Australian Writing (Winter 1980): 67-69.
- A story about the chasm between true love and sexual harrassment in the life of Enid.
- "Princess." Landfall 36.2 (June 1982): 146-151.
- The narrator reflects on the complications of male-female relationships, infidelity, and over-romanticised images of romantic love.
- "Escape." Woman-sight: A Collection of Stories. Ed. and introd. Suzann Olsson. Palmerston North, N.Z.: Nagare, 1989. 69-76.
- Karen contemplates many variations of escape from the conventional world of her middle-class marriage to Richard.
Non-fiction
- Why Students Withdraw. Palmerston North, N.Z.: Massey University Centre for Extramural Studies, 1979.
- Co-authored with B. Cavanagh.
- Readability: an Issue in Distance Learning. Palmerston North, N.Z.: Massey University Centre for Extramural Studies, 1981.
- Co-authored with G. A. Wagner.
- "The Female Majority: Women Who Study Extramurally." Women’s Studies: Conference Papers ‘82. Ed. Hilary Haines with assistance from Pat Rosier, Claire-Louise McCurdy and Candis Craven. Auckland, N.Z.: Women’s Studies Assocation, 1983. 170-178. Rpt. in Teaching at a Distance 25 (1984):
- Co-authored with J. A Owen. The authors examine the statistics concerning the extramural student population at Massey University and provide a detailed study on the female extramural student population.
- Users and Non-Users (An Investigation Into The Reasons Why The Majority Of Extramural Students At Massey University Do Not Use The Extramural Library Service.) Palmerston North, N.Z.: Massey U, 1987.
- "Facing the Future for Local Government: Strategies for Survival in the Marketplace: Part One: A Speculative View of the Future." Local Authority Management 14.1 (Mar. 1988): 46-51.
- Tremaine writes, in two parts, of the implications of the economic statement issued by the Government on 17 December 1987 that outlined local government reform. She states that in the first article she ‘will examine the principles embodied in the economic statement and consider in a very speculative way what each of these principles will mean if taken to an extreme.’
- "Facing the Future for Local Government: Strategies for Survival in the Marketplace: Part Two: The Future Takes Shape." Local Authority Management 14.2 (Sept. 1988): 42-56.
- In this second part of a two-part discussion on the proposed local government reform issued by the Government on 17 December 1987, Tremaine states that she ‘will outline the types of skills and strategies that will be needed to cope in the new environment.’
- "Management: Selecting Staff with Communication Skills." Accountants’ Journal 67.10 (1988): 44-45.
- Co-authored with Rebecca Emery and Shawna MacIvor.
- "Facing The Future For Local Government: Strategies For Survival In The Market Place: A Speculative View Of The Future." Local Authority Management 14.1 (1988): 46-51.
- "Sharing from the Baskets of Knowledge: Bicultural Communication at Work." Business Communication: New Zealand Perspectives. Ed. Frank Sligo. Palmerston North, N.Z.: Software Technology N.Z., 1990. 48-54.
- In this essay on biculturalism in the area of management, Tremaine sets out to examine ‘the unexplored opportunities available to us in New Zealand to use tried and tested Māori systems of management and training.’ She concludes by listing six differences between Marae Management and Pakeha Management in terms of leadership, decision-making, time management, prized attributes, management styles and mission.
- "Equal Employment Opportunity and State Sector Reform." Reshaping the State: New Zealand’s Bureaucratic Revolution. Ed. Jonathan Boston, John Martin, June Pallot and Pat Walsh. Auckland, N.Z.: Oxford UP, 1991. 343-366.
- Tremaine defines Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), outlines the introduction of EEO into New Zealand’s state sector and contrasts the New Zealand EEO developments with that of other countries.
- The Vision and the Reality: Equal Employment Opportunity in the New Zealand Workplace. Marianne Tremaine and Janet Sayers. Palmerston North, N.Z.: Dunmore Press, 1993.
Reviews
- Justice and the Māori, by A.Sharp. Sites: A Journal for Radical Perspectives on Culture. 22 (1991): 163-164.