Gina Cole

Cole was born in 1960.[1] She is of Fijian, Scottish and Welsh descent.[2] From 1963 to 1966, she and her family lived on Farewell Spit, where her father was the lighthouse keeper.[3] As of 2022, she lives in Auckland.[2] She studied law at the University of Auckland and was admitted to the bar in 1991. She practiced as a barrister until 2018, when she closed her practice to focus on her writing.[4]

In 2013, Cole obtained a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland,[4][5] and, in 2020, earned a PhD in Creative Writing from Massey University on the topic of indigenous science fiction.[6][7][8] She has said that as "an Indigenous Fijian queer woman writer I feel it is so important that we Indigenous peoples tell our own stories so that we can put forward our perspective and experience".[9] In 2014, she won a writing contest at the Auckland Pride Festival run by Express magazine.[10]

In 2017, Cole's short story collection Black Ice Matter received the award for best first book of fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.[2][11] A review by Stuff said that the collection "would be a good book on any reckoning but as a first book it is simply outstanding"; it "shows an assurance of tone, a clarity of style and expression, and an ability to handle different voices, that would be the envy of most more experienced authors".[12] She also had an essay published in the collection New Writing edited by Thom Conroy,[13] and a short story published in Black Marks on the White Page edited by Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makereti.[14] In 2021, she was a writer-in-residence at the Michael King Writers Centre through a residency for established Pasifika writers,[6] and had work published in the anthology Out Here: An Anthology of Takatapui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Chris Tse and Emma Barnes.[15]

In July 2022, Cole's first novel Na Viro was published. It is a science fiction novel set in the distant future and featuring Pacific culture.[2] In the week before 15 July 2022, it was the second-best selling fiction book in New Zealand.[16] A review in the New Zealand Listener described it as an "ambitious book", "at the forefront of a new and particularly interesting genre", but noted that the book was challenging to read in some respects, with the story lacking "a single emotional centre and ... some much-needed explanation of things both futuristic and mundane".[17] In the same month, she received the inaugural International Residency with Australia, a partnership between the Michael King Writers Centre and Varuna, The Writers' House. She received a month's residency at Varuna, to be taken up in October 2022, and an appearance at the Blue Mountains Writers' Festival.[18]

In the 2023 New Year Honours, Cole was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature.[19]

• Black Ice Matter (Huia Publishers, 2016)
• Na Viro (Huia Publishers, 2022)

• Short story: Sunset on Mars, by Gina Cole on Newsroom
• Circling Back, article by Cole about her life on The Pantograph Punch, 8 July 2021
• "How I write: Gina Cole", article for Stuff, 26 October 2022