Author and playwright Renée dies, aged 94

We at the library were deeply saddened to hear of the recent passing of Aotearoa author Renée, born in 1929 in Napier of Ngāti Kahungunu and Irish-English-Scots ancestry. After a hard start “she left school at twelve and worked in various jobs” before she found her true vocation in life as a writer, gaining a BA at the University of Auckland in 1979.

Much of her work championed the oppressed and the disenfranchised; humanising working-class people and often having women in leading roles. She wrote over twenty highly acclaimed plays and published many fiction works including The Wild Card, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards.

Her last book, “one of her recent forays into the crime genre,” was Blood Matters, published in 2022.

She documented her own amazing life in her autobiography These Two Hands.

She was a driven author, writing and creating work well into her nineties and beyond, and was as passionate about the things that interested her in those later years as ever.

She has described herself as a ‘lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideas’ and expressed these convictions strongly and clearly in many of her powerful works.

We at the library were proud, honoured and privileged to do several library events with Renée, some of the recordings of which can be viewed on the library YouTube channel. You can find an extensive range of her wonderful work in our library collection.

We wish to extend our deepest sympathies to her family at this time.