Lani Wendt Young is a Samoan–New Zealand writer, editor, publisher and journalist. She is the author of 15 books including the bestselling young adult series Telesa.
Wendt Young was born and raised in Apia, Samoa.[1] Her father is Samoan from the villages of Lefaga, Vaiala, Sapapalii, and Malie. Her mother is New Zealand Māori of the Ngāti Kahungunu tribe.[2]
In February 2019, Young was the recipient of a New Zealand Society of Authors Waitangi Day Honor. In accepting the award, Young said:[3]
Young was the 2018 ACP Pacific Laureate, selected by the Africa, Caribbean, Pacific Group of States. The writer prize recognises creativity, courage and entrepreneurship. The prize acknowledged her fiction writing, utilising of digital publishing to take Samoan stories to a global audience, and also her journalism.
Wendt Young was a co-founder of the online media site Samoa Planet. In May 2018 she was the recipient of the Douglas Gabb Australia Pacific Journalism Internship, hosted by ABC News and the Australian Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In 2017, she was one of 10 "outstanding journalists" from the Pacific selected to report on the 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Bonn, Germany.[4]
She is the author of the young adult fantasy Telesa series, which has been described as the Pacific version of Twilight, and credited with helping to inspire young Pacific people around the world to read fiction from Oceania.[1] The story is set in modern Samoa and is inspired by ancient mythology.
In 2015, Wendt Young published two books in her contemporary romance series: Scarlet Secrets and Scarlet Lies. A third book, Scarlet Redemption, was published in 2019.
In 2011 Young's Sleepless in Samoa: A Collection of Short Fiction won the USP Press Prize for Fiction. It was later published as Afakasi Woman: A Collection of Short Fiction. She also writes stories for children, which have been published by the New Zealand School Journal.[5]
She was commissioned in 2009 to research and write Pacific Tsunami Galu Afi. The book gave accounts of over 180 survivors, rescuers, medical teams and aid workers from Samoa, American Samoa and the Tongan island of Niuatoputapu. The printing of the book was funded by the Government of Australia.
In 2002 she won the Telecom Samoa short story competition. Her short fiction has since been published in collections in New Zealand, Australia and Samoa.
Young has called blogging her "first writing love" and her blog Sleepless in Samoa has an international following.[6] She chronicles with wry humor, the parenting journey raising 5 children. She also writes about feminism, religion, climate justice and LGBTI/faafafine/faatama in Oceania. She is an advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse and has written at length about family violence in Samoa.
The ACP Secretariat said of Young:[7]
Her book, Fire's Caress, was shortlisted for the young adult fiction award at the 2021 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.[8] In August 2022 it won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for "best youth novel".[9]
In August 2021 she released Mata Oti ('Eyes of Death'), the first Zombie apocalypse story set in Samoa.[10] A seventh book in her Telesa series, Earth's Embrace, was published in April 2022.