the Pakeha and unwillingness to the Maori", and was highly critical of the novel. In consequence his editorship of the Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories was boycotted by some writers, including Keri Hulme, although Stead denied accusations of racism or being anti-Māori. Stead was active in protests against the 1981 protest against Springboks and was part of the crowd that occupied the field at a game in Hamilton causing its cancellation. Stead retired from his position as the Professor of English at the University of Auckland in 1986 to write full time, after the success of his novel All Visitors Ashore (1984). In the following two decades he wrote a string of internationally successful novels, and twice won the fiction section of the New Zealand Book Awards with All Visitors Ashore and The Singing Whakapapa (1994). Stead's historical novel Mansfield: A Novel, based on the life of the writer Katherine Mansfield, was a finalist for the 2005 Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize and received commendation in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the South East Asia and South Pacific region. Stead has continued to write and receive international accolades well into his seventies and eighties. In 2010 he won the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for his short story "Last Season's Man". The short story was subject to some controversy, with literary commentator Fergus Barrowman suggesting that it appeared to be a "revenge fantasy" about Stead's rivalry with younger writer Nigel Cox, who had criticised Stead in a 1994 essay. The story was reported on by UK satirical magazine Private Eye. Stead in response has said that the story was a work of fiction. Stead was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to New Zealand literature, in the 1985 New Year Honours, and was admitted into the highest civilian honour New Zealand can bestow, the Order of New Zealand in the 2007 Special Honours. In August 2015, Stead was named the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2015 to 2017. To celebrate the conclusion of Stead's term as Poet Laureate, the Alexander Turnbull Library published a signed, limited edition book of his work called In the Mirror, and Dancing. The little volume of poems was hand-pressed by Brendan O'Brien and illustrated with line sketches by New Zealand expatriate artist Douglas MacDiarmid. The book was launched on 8 August 2017 in