Stevan Eldred-Grigg

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Stevan Treleaven Eldred-Grigg Born 1952 is the New Zealand author of nine novels, five history books and several short stories.

Born in Greymouth, New Zealand, he was one of nine children of a mining official and a housewife living in the small mining town of Blackball. Stevan was brought up in the West Coast and Canterbury. He graduated from the University of Canterbury in 1975 with an MA in History before obtaining a PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1975.

Initially a writer of non-fiction historical books, Eldred-Grigg published three works, A Southern Gentry, a history of landowning families in Canterbury during the 19th century, A New History of Canterbury, a general history of the province written since the 1960s, and Pleasures of the Flesh, a book about prostitution, drugs and sexuality in colonial New Zealand. In 1987 he wrote his first fiction work, Oracles and Miracles, the story of two sisters growing up in Christchurch before and during World War II. Since then he has written several fiction and non-fiction books.

Eldred-Grigg is the first New Zealander to have had a novel published in Mandarin when his 1987 novel, Oracles and Miracless, was published in China in 2002 under the new title Sheng Xian Qi Ji.[1]

Eldred-Grigg has lived in Mexico City, Berlin and Shanghai. He is currently based in Wellington. He is currently working on a history of gold rushes in New Zealand.[2]