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Kaituhi Author Talk - Jade Kake

Kaituhi is a celebration of Tai Tokerau’s literary talent, giving readers and writers the opportunity to interact with each other 1:1 and join lively discussions.

Jade Kake (Ngāpuhi, Te Whakatōhea, Te Arawa), is director and founder of Matakohe Architecture and Urbanism in Whangārei, a design practice focussed on working with Māori organisations on their marae, papakāinga and civic projects and in working with mana whenua groups to express their cultural values and narratives through the design of their physical environments.

She is also a part-time lecturer at Huri te Ao School of Future Environments at AUT and a writer of fiction and non-fiction.

Jade’s non-fiction writing includes:
Rewi: Āta haere kia tere, a biography of acclaimed and visionary thinker architect Rewi Thompson (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Raukawa), which Kake co-authored with architectural journalist Jeremy Hansen.
Rebuilding the Kāinga: Lessons from Te Ao Hurihuri, which charts the recent resurgence of contemporary papakāinga whenua Māori.

She has contributed chapters in collections about architecture and design and has also written for Stuff, The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch, ArchitectureNOW and Metro.

Her debut novel, Checkerboard Hill published in 2023, tells the story of Ria, a Māori woman raised in Australia who is navigating complex trans-Tasman family dynamics.

Jade has won awards for architectural writing, received the Emerging Māori Writer’s Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in 2019 and received the Copyright Licensing New Zealand and New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa Writers’ Award in 2021. In 2020, she was a participant on Te Papa Tupu writers’ mentoring programme.