Louise Wallace

Wallace, Louise (1983-) is a poet and the author of four poetry collections all published by Victoria University Press. She grew up in Gisborne, and now lives on the Otago Peninsula in Ōtepoti with her husband and their young son.

Wallace graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from Victoria University in 2004. In 2008 she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters (Victoria University of Wellington), and won the Biggs Prize for Poetry for her manuscript. Her poems have ben published in numerous journals both in New Zealand and abroad, including Akzente, Atlanta Review, Islands, Landfall, Meanjin, Sport, and Turbine, and have appeared three times in the Best New Zealand Poems series (2009, 2011 and 2017). Her work has been anthologised in a number of collections, including The Best of Best New Zealand Poems (2011), Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page (2014), and Manifesto Aotearoa: 101 Political New Zealand Poems (2017).

Louise Wallace’s first collection of poetry, Since June, was published in 2009. The collection touches on family stories, popular music, travel, and relationships. Enough was published by Victoria University Press in 2013. For the Landfall Review Online, Lynley Edmeades wrote, ‘Clean, tight, honest – at times, heartbreakingly so – Wallace’s second collection is the real stuff.’ Her third collection, Bad Things, was released in 2017. Paula Green said in her review on NZ Poetry Shelf, ‘There is a freshness and a daring at work here, because the poetry seems beholden only to its own choreography. I love that. I can’t think of another book quite like it.’ This is a Story About Your Mother, Wallace's fourth collection of poetry was published in 2023.

Wallace worked for a number of years as a tutor in Creative Writing at Massey University of Wellington and Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT). She was awarded the Robert Burns Fellowship in 2015, one of six University of Otago Arts Fellowships presented annually. Also in 2015, she established Starling, an online literary journal publishing work by New Zealand writers under 25 years of age. She placed third in the 2015 Landfall Essay Competition and has presented her work at the National Young Writer’s Festival in Newcastle, Australia, and in 2016, she represented New Zealand at the Mexico City Poetry Festival. Wallace was a regular presenter for poetry on Radio New Zealand’s Short Story Club in 2017 and 2018. In 2019, she began a PhD in Creative Writing on womanhood in long-form poetry at the University of Otago.

In 2024 Louise's first novel, Ash, was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press.