Peter Wells  

New Zealander Peter Wells is most well-known in his homeland as a writer. He published his first novel, Boy Overboard, in 1997 and has since produced various award-winning works including his first collection of short stories, Dangerous Desires, which won the New Zealand and Reed awards for fiction. Aside from writing stories and essays, Wells is also a film and television director and screenwriter. Some of his film credits include the feature DESPERATE REMEDIES, which was an official selection of the 1993 Cannes Film Festival, and the critically acclaimed shorts JEWEL’S DARL, MY FIRST SUIT, THE MIGHTY CIVIC, and LITTLE QUEEN. Fellow New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro used a novella of Wells’s as inspiration for the feature film MEMORY AND DESIRE. Wells first gained recognition in the film world for A DEATH IN THE FAMILY (1986). He is also responsible for RICORDI!, a dramatization of Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington stories, which was commissioned for the 1996 New Zealand Festival of the Arts. (10/09)