Joan Druett is …. Eagerly looking forward to hot pot and hot spas, and the Chinese New Year decorations in the streets.
Joan Druett is an independent maritime historian and writer, married to Ron Druett, a highly regarded maritime artist who regularly shows in galleries in both New Zealand and New England.
In 1984, while exploring the tropical island of Rarotonga, she slipped into the hole left by the roots of a large uprooted tree, and at the bottom discovered the grave of a young American whaling wife, who had died at the age of twenty-four in January 1850. It was a life-changing experience, crowned by the award of a Fulbright fellowship. Since then her life has been devoted to finding out more about the more unusual voyagers under sail, including women, children, and the Polynesians the captains picked up in New Zealand and the Pacific islands.
As well as producing many award-winning books of maritime history, including the bestselling Island of the Lost, she is the author of the popular Wiki Coffin murder mysteries. Her biography of an extraordinary Tahitian, Tupaia, the Remarkable Story of Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator, won the general nonfiction prize in the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards.
Title info:
Tupaia, the Remarkable Story of Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator will be published in Taiwan by Locus Publishing in January 2015.
Contact: Vinelle Pan, Rights Director vinelle@locuspublishing.com
