Vaughan Rapatahana

Vaughan Rapatahana 'commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines, and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romainian, Spanish. He is the author and editor/co-editor of well over 40 books. He earned a PhD from the University of Auckland with a thesis about Colin Wilson and writes and lectures extensively about Wilson. More, Rapatahana is a critic of the agencise of English language proliferation and the consequent decimation of indigenous tongues, inaugurating and co-editing English language as Hydra and Why English? Confronting the Hydra (Multilingual Matters, 2012; 2016) and several academic papers accordingly. He is a poet, with nine collections published in Hong Kong SAR; Macau; Philippines; USA; England; France, India, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Atonement (UST Press, 2015) was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines in 2016; he won the inaugural Proverse Poetry Prize the same year; and was included in Best New Zealand Poems (2017). He also writes short fiction and has had two novels published. Rapatahana is one of the few World authors who consistently writes in and is published in te reo Māori. It is his mission to continuew to do so an to push for a far wider recognition of the need to write an to be published in this tongue. His latest poetry collection is written exclusively in te reo Māori (with English language 'translations') is titled te pāhikahikatanga/ incommensurability and was published by Flying Islands Books in Australia, 2012.'

Biographical sources

• Te Awa o Kupu. Eds. Vaughan Rapatahana & Kiri Piahana-Wong. New Zealand: Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2023. 406.