Hinemoana Baker

Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa, Te Atiawa

Hinemoana Baker has published, produced and performed as a singer-songwriter and poet since the early 1990s in New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia, Europe and the USA. She writes lyric poetry and acoustic music and performs as a poet, sound artist and singer. She also works as a producer, with a special passion for spoken word and sonic experimentation. Sometimes she works as a features producer for Radio New Zealand - many people remember her programme Waiata, a weekly feature about Māori Music on Radio New Zealand National.

Her work as an editor has included the anthology Kaupapa: New Zealand Poets, World Issues (2007) and 4th Floor, the annual online literary journal of Whitireia Polytechnic. She lives and works in Wellington, where she freelances as a writer, musician, producer and teacher of creative writing.

Her writing and music have taken her all around New Zealand for readings and performances, and offshore as well. She spent three months in the United States as a writer in residence at the University of Iowa, as part of their International Writing Programme. A highlight of her time in the United States was a performance alongside Pulitzer Prizewinner Yosef Komunyakaa in Pittsburgh, with the Oliver Lake Big Band. In February 2012, she returned to the US to read and perform in New York City as part of the Phantom Billstickers Poetry on Posters launch.

Hinemoana is a graduate of the prestigious Master of Arts programme at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Wellington.