Albert Wendt

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Albert Wendt, CNZM (born 1939) is a Samoan poet and writer. Among his works is Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979).

[edit] Biography

Albert Wendt was born in Apia, Western Samoa. He studied at Ardmore Teacher's College and at the Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an M.A. in history. He returned in 1965 to Western Samoa, becoming principal of Samoa College. In 1974 he moved to Fiji, where he taught at the University of the South Pacific.

In 1977 Wendt returned home to set up the University of the South Pacific Center in Samoa. He worked closely with the literary journal Mana, and edited in 1975 collections of poems from Fiji, Western Samoa, the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), and the Solomon Islands.

Wendt's epic Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979), won the 1980 New Zealand Book Awards. He was appointed to the first chair in Pacific literature at University of the South Pacific in Suva. In 1988 he took up a professorship of Pacific studies at the University of Auckland. In 1999 Wendt was visiting Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii. In 2001 he was made Companion of the Order of New Zealand for his services to literature.

[edit] Works

• Comes the revolution, (1972)
• The contract, (1972)
• Sons for the Return Home, (1973) ISBN 0582717183, ISBN 0824817966 - also made into feature film
• Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree: And Other Stories, (1974) ISBN 0582717337, ISBN 0582717345 (pbk.) - also made into feature film
• Pouliuli, 1977 ISBN 058271754X, ISBN 0824807286
• Inside us the Dead. Poems 1961 to 1974, (1976) ISBN 0582717507
• Leaves of the Banyan Tree, (1979) ISBN 0582717701, ISBN 0385178581
• Lali: A Pacific Anthology, (1980) (edited) ISBN 0582717728
• Shaman of Visions, (1984)
• The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man, (1986) ISBN 0670806765
• Ola, (1991) ISBN 0140157638, ISBN 0824815858
• Black Rainbow, (1992) ISBN 0140166939, ISBN 0824815866
• Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English since 1980, (1995) (edited) ISBN 0824817311
• Photographs, (1995) ISBN 1869401220
• The Best of Albert Wendt's Short Stories, (1999) ISBN 186941392X
• The Book of the Black Star, (2002) ISBN 1869402839
• Whetu Moana: A Collection of Pacific Poems, (2002) (edited) ISBN 0824827562
• The Mango's Kiss: a Novel, (2003) ISBN 1869415809
• The Songmaker’s Chair, (2004) ISBN 1869690311

[edit] External links

• Inside us the Dead Poem sequence

Persondata
NAME	Wendt, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Contemporary Samoan poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH	1939
PLACE OF BIRTH	Apia, Western Samoa
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH