at a woollen mill, and as a mail deliverer in Greymouth, on the West Coast of the South Island. She was also a pharmacist's assistant at Grey Hospital, a proofreader and journalist at the Grey Evening Star, and an assistant television director on the shows Country Calendar, Dig This and Play School. She continued writing, and had her work published in journals and magazines; some appeared under the pseudonym Kai Tainui. Hulme received Literary Fund grants in 1973, 1977, and 1979, and in 1979 she was a guest at the East-West Center in Hawaii as a visiting poet. Hulme held the 1977 Robert Burns Fellowship and became writer-in-residence at the University of Otago in 1978. During this time, she continued working on her novel, the bone people. Hulme submitted the manuscript for the bone people to several publishers over a period of 12 years, until it was accepted for publication by the Spiral Collective, a feminist literary and arts collective in New Zealand. The book was published in February 1984 and won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize in 1985. Hulme was the first New Zealander to win the Booker Prize and also the first writer to win the prize for their debut novel. The ceremony was broadcast on Channel 4 and as Hulme was unable to attend she asked three women from Spiral – Irihapeti Ramsden, Marian Evans and Miriama Evans – to accept the award on her behalf. Ramsden and Miriama Evans walked up to the podium wearing Maori korowai, arm in arm with Marian Evans in a tuxedo, and chanted a Maori karanga as they went. In 1985, Hulme was writer-in-residence at the University of Canterbury and in 1990 she was awarded the 1990 Scholarship in Letters from the Queen Elizabeth Arts Council Literature Committee for two years. Also in 1990, she was awarded the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal. In 1996 she became the patron of New Zealand Republic. Hulme also served on the Literary Fund Advisory Committee (1985–1989) and New Zealand's Indecent Publications Tribunal (1985–1990). Around 1986 Hulme began working on a second novel, BAIT, about fishing and death. She also worked on a third novel, On the Shadow Side; these two works were referred to by Hulme as "twinned novels". Common themes in Hulme's writing are identity and isolation. Inspiration for her characters and stories also often came