Peter Simpson (writer)

Peter Alan Simpson (born 1942) is an academic, writer, literary critic, and former New Zealand politician of the Labour Party.^[1]

Simpson was born in Tākaka in 1942.^[1] From 1955 to 1959, he was educated at Nelson College, where he was a prefect and member of the school's 1st XV rugby union team in his final year.^[2] He gained a MA (Hons) from the University of Canterbury, and a PhD from the University of Toronto with a 1975 thesis titled Wordsworth to Hardy: lines of relationship and continuity in nineteenth century English poetry.^[1][3]

He represented the electorate of Lyttelton in Parliament from 1987 to 1990, when he was defeated by Gail McIntosh, one of a number of losses contributing to the fall of the Fourth Labour Government.

Before entering parliament he was chairman of the Lyttelton electorate committee of the Labour Party.^[4]

Simpson had been teaching English since the 1960s at various universities. He was at Massey University, University of Toronto and Carleton University.^[1] In his last teaching role, he was at the University of Auckland as associate professor in the Department of English, and head of English, roles from which he retired in 2008.^[5][6]

He is the director of Holloway Press, set up at the University of Auckland in 1994 and named after Ron Holloway (1909–2003), a renowned university printer and publisher.^[7][8][9]

Simpson received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2017.^[10]

In 2020, Simpson was conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Canterbury.^[11]

• Ronald Hugh Morrieson (Oxford University Press, 1982)
• Candles in a Dark Room: James K. Baxter and Colin McCahon (Auckland Art Gallery, 1996)
• Colin McCahon: The Titirangi Years, 1953–1959 (Auckland University Press, 2007)
• Fantastica: The World of Leo Bensemann (Auckland University Press, 2011)
• Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933–1953 (Auckland University Press, 2016)
• Colin McCahon: There is Only One Direction, Vol. I 1919–1959 (Auckland University Press, 2019)
• Colin McCahon: Is this the Promised Land? Vol. 2 1960–1987 (Auckland University Press, 2020)
• Dear Colin, Dear Ron: The selected letters of Colin McCahon and Ron O'Reilly (Te Papa Press, 2024)

Simpson lives in Auckland. He is married with two children.^{[citation needed]}