1. Alan Duff is best known as the author of the novel Once Were Warriors, which was made into a film of the same name in 1994.
16 Facts About Alan Duff
1. 2.
Alan Duff was born in Rotorua, New Zealand, the son of forestry scientist Gowan Duff, known as Pat, and Hinau Josephine Duff, known as Kuia, of Ngati Rangitihi and Ngati Tuwharetoa descent, and grandson of writer Oliver Duff.
3.
Alan Duff was born and raised in a State housing area in Rotorua.
4.
Oliver Duff was a writer and foundation editor of the New Zealand Listener, and Duff inherited his grandfather's love of literature.
5.
Duff's parents separated when he was 10, and Duff moved in with a Maori uncle and aunt at Whakarewarewa.
6.
Alan Duff wrote at some length about his troubled childhood in his 1999 memoir, Out of the Mist and the Steam.
7.
Alan Duff was expelled from his school Rotorua Boys' High School and ran away from home, ending up as a State ward at Hamilton Boys' Home.
8.
Later he lived with another uncle, anthropologist Roger Alan Duff, and went back to school at Christchurch Boys' High School.
9.
Alan Duff had a partner, with whom he had two children.
10.
Alan Duff worked as an installer of sheet metal insulation, then as a barman and bar manager.
11.
Alan Duff began writing full-time in 1985 and had Once Were Warriors published in 1990.
12.
Alan Duff tried writing a thriller as his first novel, but it was rejected.
13.
Alan Duff burned the manuscript and started writing Once Were Warriors, which had an immediate and great impact.
14.
Alan Duff wrote his own memoir, Out of the Mist and the Steam, in 1999.
15.
Jake's Long Shadow is the third volume in Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors trilogy.
16.
Alan Duff pled not guilty to failing to remain at a scene after being stopped, failing to stop for police and two charges of resisting police.