Stevan Eldred-Grigg is an award-winning writer, author of some of the best-selling works of New Zealand history and of leading New Zealand novels. His works of fiction and non-fiction explore the West Coast, Canterbury, the wider South Island and the whole of New Zealand. He also writes about Samoa, Shanghai, Mexico and Australia. As a gay writer, a democratic writer, a comic writer, a satirical writer and a writer of tragedy, he takes on many topics. He is an observer and critic of inequality. Often he probes inequality by using the lens of social class. Or he does the probing by asking questions about gender and race relations. He has looked at race, gender and class in many contexts. Another context for many of his books is the body. Kiwi sex life plays a lively role in several of his novels and history books, as do drink and drugs. Although he is himself Pākehā, known to his readers as someone who looks closely at Pākehā society and Pākehā culture, he has also written about links and breaks between Māori and Pākehā as well as the lives of the New Zealand Chinese, and about the relationship between ‘White New Zealand’ and the peoples of the Pacific, above all the people of Samoa and the Cook Islands.