Michael King

In 1967, King married Ros Henry and they both had two children together - Jonathan Michael born in 1967 and Rachael Frances born in 1970. Jonathan is a successful filmmaker in New Zealand and Rachael is a known novelist, like her father.

In 1987, he got married for the second time to Maria Jungowska, an editor in a book publishing firm and in 1993 they both moved to Opoutere in the Coromandel, New Zealand.

In 2004, King and his second wife Maria were killed in a car fire after their car crashed into a tree near Maramarua, on the State Highway 2, in the north of Waikato. It has still not been figured out how the car crashed because the speed of the car has not been detected as the cause of the accident.

Michael King was born on 15 December 1945 in Wellington, New Zealand, to Eleanor and Commander King Lewis. He had three siblings. His family belonged to the Irish and Scottish ethnicity and followed the Catholic culture. He always found his elders to be yearning for their ‘old countries’ and their ancient pasts. This sparked up his interest in the history of New Zealand, in its archaeology and terrain from a very early age.

He was immersed in the rich and manifold history of New Zealand by reading classics like James Cowan’s ‘The New Zealand Wars’. This interest in history and past led him to take up a bachelor’s course in history at the Victoria University in 1967 and masters in 1968 from the University of Waikato, where he did his Ph.D in 1978.

After completing his Ph.D in 1978, he joined the staff of the Waikato Times, where he was allocated to cover the Maori issues. This expedition brought him closer to Tainui tribes and their power base at Turangawaewae marae in Ngaruawahia.

King’s expertise on Maori etiquettes and access to many Maori informants helped him immensely in his writing all through 1970s and 1980s. This was the time when he wrote many books on the tribe and their culture, like: ‘Moko: Maori Tattooing in the 20th Century’. The book contained Marti Friedlander’s lamenting photographs of the exisiting kuia with moko. Another book ‘Maori: A Photographic and Social History’ was written by him 1983. King’s most important work on Maori was also written during this period - ‘Te Puea’ in 1977 and ‘Whina’ in 1983. These were biographies on two fascinating Maori leaders. In these biographies King drew a charismatic but critical description of these women leaders from the Maori tribes, telling about the times in which Te Puea Herangi and Whina Cooper lived along with his personal documentary of archive material.

In 1995, King did another biography called ‘Frank Sargeson’. The book was considered to be full of vigorous narrative on Maori culture with Sargeson’s experiences and details of his life. It also contains the experiences of Sargeson’s many friends and enemies, which helps in carving out history of Pakeha literature in New Zealand.

By the end of 90s, King tried to shed his image of being just the storyteller of selectively Maori figures, history and culture. This was the time when he explored his own ethnicity in ‘Being Pakeha’ and dealt with the vast topic of the nature of Pakeha New Zealand cultures. He was more inclined towards Pakeha literature because he was a Pakeha himself and he was always thin-skinned towards the fact that he was a Pakeha, writing mostly about the Maori world. The more he explored the Maori world the more aware he became of the fact that Pakehas has the same richness as Maoris and had the same right to be spiritually associated with the nature.

He wrote other books like: a biography called ‘Janet Frame’ in 2000, ‘The Penguin History of New Zealand’ in 2004 and also contributed to ‘Dictionary of New Zealand Biography’ in which he especially wrote about the life of Tommy Solomon who is known to be the ‘Last of the Morioris’. Amongst other books were: ‘Moriori: A People Rediscovered’ in 1989 and ‘A Land Apart: The Chathan Islands of New Zealand’ in 1990, which was a photojournalist essay made in collaboration with the photographer Robin Morrison. He wrote ‘Being Pakeha Now’ to replace his own ‘Being Pakeha’. It is a memoir; a celebration of New Zealand and its people and is an in-depth journey into the psyche of New Zealand.

In 1976, King received one of New Zealand’s most outstanding and celebrated literary awards, the ‘Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship’. This fellowship facilitates the recipient to work in Menton, France, for a year.

His biography on Janet Frame ‘Wrestling with the Angel’ which came out in 2000, bagged him the Montana Medal in the category of the best Nonfiction. Also, he received the Montana Award for History and Biography, which he shared with a fellow New Zealand writer Gregory O’Brien. For the same work in 2001, he was honored with the Reader’s Choice Award at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards and the Nielsen Book Data New Zealand Bookseller’s Choice Award.

In the year 2003, King was honored with the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement in the category of nonfiction. He received a prize of 60,000 New Zealand dollars. These awards are meant to be given to the writers from New Zealand who make an outstanding contribution to the literature of New Zealand. For ‘The Penguin History of New Zealand’ he won the Reader’s Choice Award in 2004. During the award ceremony, King was named as the ‘Reviewer of the Year’. The same book won the Nielsen Book Data New Zealand Bookseller’s Choice Award in the same year.