Bernadette Hall (born 1945) is a New Zealand playwright and poet. Biography Hall was born in 1945 in Alexandra, New Zealand. She was raised in what she describes as "a small-city Catholic community that was proud, theatrical and pretty much enclosed." After a career as a teacher of Latin and classical studies, she started writing full-time in her forties. She has held residencies at both Canterbury University and Victoria University and is widely published. She spent 10 years as the editor of Takahe magazine and five as the poetry editor of The Press, Christchurch's main daily newspaper. Hall's poetry collection The Lustre Jug was a finalist in the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Awards. She is the patron of Hagley Writers' Institute. Works Plays Glad and the Angels (1992) The Clothesline (1993) The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls (1992) Poetry collections Heartwood (Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1989) of Elephants etc. (Untold Press, 1990) The Persistent Levitator (Victoria University Press, 1994) Still Talking (Victoria University Press, 1997) Settler Dreaming (Victoria University Press, 2001) The Merino Princess: Selected Poems (Victoria University Press, 2004) The Ponies (Victoria University Press, 2007) The Lustre Jug (Victoria University Press, 2009) Life & Customs (Victoria University Press, 2014) Awards and honours 1991 – Writer in residence at the University of Canterbury 1996 – Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago 2004 – Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellowship 2006 – Writer's fellowship at Victoria University 2015 – Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement in Poetry 2017 – Appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature, in the 2017 New Year Honours References 1945 births 20th-century New Zealand poets New Zealand women poets New Zealand schoolteachers People from Alexandra, New Zealand New Zealand editors New Zealand women editors New Zealand magazine editors Women magazine editors New Zealand Roman Catholics 20th-century New Zealand dramatists and playwrights Living people New Zealand women dramatists and playwrights International Writing Program alumni Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit 21st-century New Zealand poets 21st-century New Zealand women writers 20th-century New Zealand women writers