Becky Manawatu

Becky Manawatu (born 1982) is a New Zealand writer. In 2020, she won two Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her first novel, Auē and Best Crime Novel at the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards.

Biography Manawatu was born Becky Wixon in June 1982 in Nelson, New Zealand, and raised in Waimangaroa on the West Coast of the South Island, 15 minutes from Westport, attending Waimangaroa Primary School. She met her husband Tim while at Buller High School and has two children, Siena and Maddox. Manawatu was longlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2018, and an essay of hers was selected for a Landfall anthology. The judges described it as "a breath-taking expose of lives lived on the margins, and the fight for redemption and absolution".

Manawatu won the 2021 Robert Burns Fellowship to work on her next novel, titled Papahaua, in Dunedin.

Personal life Manawatu is of Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Mamoe, Waitaha and Pākehā background.