Peter Hawes

Peter Robert Hawes (30 September 1947 – 29 October 2018) was a New Zealand playwright, novelist, and scriptwriter.

Peter Hawes
Hawes in 1994
Born	Peter Robert Hawes (1947-09-30)30 September 1947 Westport, New Zealand
Died	29 October 2018(2018-10-29) (aged 71) Koitiata, New Zealand
Occupation	Writer
Alma mater	University of Canterbury
Genres	Novel, playwriting, scriptwriting
Years active	1974–2018

Biography

Born in Westport, Hawes earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch.

Whilst living in Barcelona, he wrote—in Spanish—a best-selling novel about the Spanish Inquisition: La Hoguera (The Bonfire), published in 1974.^[1] After returning to New Zealand in 1975, he worked for television, as a researcher and journalist, and as a scriptwriter for various series, including Fraggle Rock, and Against the Law.

Several of his plays remain unperformed; for example, A Higher Form of Killing.

Hawes died at Koitiata on 29 October 2018.^[2][3]

Selected works

Novels

• La Hoguera (in Spanish) (The Bonfire), 1974
• Tasman's Lay, 1995
• Leapfrog with Unicorns, 1996
• Playing Waterloo, 1998
• Inca Girls Aren't Easy, 1999
• The Dream of Nikau Jam, 2000
• Royce, Royce, the People's Choice, 2002

Plays

• Alf's General Theory of Relativity, 1981
• Ptolemy's Dip, 1982
• Armageddon Revisited, 1983
• Goldie: A Good Joke, a portrait of the early New Zealand painter C. F. Goldie, 1987
• 1946 The Boat Train, which examines the effect of the World War 2 on the lives of four women, 1991
• Aunt Daisy, 1989
• The 1944 Olympic Games, one-act play
• A Higher Form of Killing, about physicist Ernest Rutherford
• The Inquisition Dies, developed from material in La Hoguera

Other

Peter Hawes (2014), Forty Years of Centrepoint Theatre: The History According to Hawes (PDF), p. 77, Wikidata Q107708826, a history of Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North