Born in Southland, New Zealand and raised in Oamaru, she became one of the pre-eminent New Zealand writers. Educated at Waitaki Girls' High School and Dunedin Teachers College, she spent much time in London and in North America. Frank Sargeson encouraged her writing after a period of psychiatric hospitalisation. She served as a Burns fellow at the University of Otago, and now lives in the Horowhenua.
Family background proved important to her in her early published work Owls Do Cry, and forms the hinterland to her autobiographical trilogy: To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City.
In 1990, her book An Angel at my Table was made into a movie under the same name.