J.C. Sturm

Jacqueline Cecilia Sturm (born Te Kare Papuni, also known as Jacquie Baxter; 1927 –  2009) (Taranaki Iwi, Parihaka and Whakātoa) was a New Zealand poet and short story writer.  Jacquie (J.C) was a pioneer of New Zealand literature, and paved the way for later female Māori writers like Patricia Grace and Keri Hulme. Witi Ihimaera described her as one of the three women he considered his elders when he began writing; they were “like spinners working on a loom” who began “spinning the tradition from which all contemporary Maori writers come”. 

 

Jacquie Sturm received an MA in philosophy from Victoria University and published her early work in student magazines from the 1940s. In the 1950s she was the first Māori author to publish a story in English in the journal Te Ao Hou. In 1966 C. K. Stead selected her story “For All the Saints” (written in 1955) for inclusion in his anthology of New Zealand short stories. Sturm had a collection of stories written by the mid-1960s, but the book “House of the Talking Cat” was not published until 1983 by the Spiral collective, She published How Things Are (1996, with Adrienne Jansen, Harry Ricketts and Meg Campbell, Whitireia Publishing with Daphne Brasell) and two poetry collections  Dedications (1996, Steele Roberts) and Postscripts (2000, Steele Roberts). The Glass House (2006, Steele Roberts) satisfied her “contrary nature” of wanting to write poetry when she was writing stories and the other way round. Sturm also received an honorary doctorate from Victoria University.