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Maebh Long is senior lecturer in English at the University of Waikato. She is the author of Assembling Flann O’Brien (2014) and editor of The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien (2018). Matthew Hayward is senior lecturer in literature and acting head of the School of Pacific Arts, Communication, and Education at the University of the South Pacific. Long and Hayward are coinvestigators of the Oceanian Modernism project and coeditors of New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific (2019).
The Rise of Pacific Literature is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the roots of contemporary Pacific writing and its place in world literature. It honors our literary ancestors while charting new critical waters, embodying the spirit of ka mua ka muri—walking backward into the future—that animates so much of our creative work. Fa‘afetai tele lava to the authors for this landmark contribution to Pacific literary scholarship. -- Selina Tusitala Marsh, Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate and scholar The Rise of Pacific Literature offers a remarkably rich history of the interplay between university English courses and creative writing communities over about fifteen crucial years in the history of Pacific literature. Long and Hayward's attention to the resonances that modernist literature may have taken on when taught within these programs of study gives us an entirely new story about the literary production enabled by modernism’s entrance into the universities. -- Laura Heffernan, author of <i>The Teaching Archive: A New History of Literary Study</i> Long and Hayward's detailed account splendidly enriches the story of Pacific literature's development by revealing how particular students, teachers, groups, courses, and events in and around universities transformed this writing in a crucial period. The Rise of Pacific Literature is at once the most comprehensive history of its kind—a go-to resource for readers already well versed in the subject—and a valuable, lucid, and engaging introduction to Pacific literature for those otherwise unfamiliar with it. -- Douglas Mao, editor of <i>The New Modernist Studies</i> This book is a triumph. It illustrates how future work linking Indigenous literatures to modernism can and should be undertaken, particularly by non-Indigenous scholars. With deft and illuminating close readings, Long and Hayward convey the twists and turns—and reciprocal relationships—by which a genuinely local and significant literary culture emerged in Oceania. -- Stephen Ross, coeditor of <i>The Routledge Handbook of North American Indigenous Modernisms</i>
