Patricia Grace is the author of six novels, five short-story collections and several children's books. She has won many awards for her work, including the New Zealand Fiction Award for Potiki in 1987, and was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which also won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Grace lives in Plimmerton near Wellington on the ancestral land of Ngati Toa, Ngati Raukawa and Te Ati Awa in close proximity to her home marae at Hongoeka Bay. Her most recent book is Ned & Katina, a non-fiction work tracing the lives of Ned and Katina Nathan.