It all began when I fell into a hole on the tropical island of Rarotonga and found the grave of a whaling wife at the bottom. A Fulbright Award to research the life of this unfortunate young woman was followed by a John Lyman Award, a residency in New York, and the L. Byrne Waterman Award.
In the year 2000 a Stout Research Fellowship at Victoria University of Wellington led to a true-life maritime mystery, "In the Wake of Madness," then the bestselling "Island of the Lost." Joan's latest nonfiction book is a biography of a remarkable Polynesian, Tupaia.
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Favorite Writers and Artists:
Mark Mills and Diana Souhami are the writers who currently grab my attention
Current Projects:
Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator -- the biography of the remarkable, yet unknowledged, Tahitian who piloted the Endeavour about the South Pacific and made an enormous - now forgotten - contribution to the voyage.
University Affiliations:
Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria University, Wellington
Contact Information:
WWW.JOAN.DRUETT.GEN.NZ
www.joan-druett.blogspot.com
druettjo@yanoo.com.au