J. Wiremu Kane

KANE, J. Wiremu (1985 -) (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Toro, Ngāti Manu, Te Mahurehure) was born in Te Kuiti and resided in many areas of Aotearoa New Zealand before returning to the Waikato in 2010. He previously trained and worked as a doctor, and holds a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Otago. After retiring from medicine in 2014 and shifting his focus to full-time writing, he also gained a Master of Professional Writing with first class Honours from the University of Waikato.

In 2020 J. Wiremu was awarded a Creative New Zealand Covid Arts Continuity Grant, and he followed this with strong output in 2021, with pieces published in Landfall, takahē, and Mayhem journals. His stories ‘Ringawera’ and ‘Argentine Ants and My Search for Hawaiki’ were published in Middle Distance: Long Stories of Aotearoa New Zealand (THWUP, 2021) and Huia Short Stories 14 (Huia Publishers, 2021) respectively. Dan Rabarts described ‘Ringawera’ as “blend[ing] crosshatched swatches of race relations, sexuality and ableism rolled into a fragment of a murder mystery.”

Also in 2021, J. Wiremu received a highly commended in the Pikihuia Awards and was awarded Toi Tipu Toi Rea Emerging Māori Artist Funding.

J. Wiremu was awarded two significant residencies in 2022: the Emerging Māori Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University in Wellington, and the Surrey Hotel Writer’s Residency. He was also selected for the Māori Literature Trust’s Te Papa Tupu Mentoring Programme, and in the same year published pieces with Annual Ink, Bad Apple, Mayhem, and the NZ Listener.

In 2023, J. Wiremu’s work was selected for the anthologies Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories (Auckland University Press, 2023) and Te Awa o Kupu (Penguin NZ, 2023). He was also published in the School Journal, Connected, ArtZone, and digitally on Stuff and ReadingRoom.