Albert Wendt is a leading figure in the field of Pacific literature and author of various novels, short stories, poetry and plays. Leaves of the Banyan Tree won the New Zealand Watties Book of the Year Award and is considered a classic. Important works include Sons for the Return Home, The Mango's Kiss, and The Book of the Black Star, which combines words and images in short poems, drawing on Samoan language, myth and the author's own experience. His play The Songmaker's Chair was a highlight of the first Auckland International Arts Festival.

Since 1988, Wendt has held the Chair in New Zealand and Pacific Literature at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa. He is a mentor to many writers and has been responsible for anthologizing the literature of the region in several volumes, most recently in Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, the 2003 collection he edited with Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan. Recent honors include an Honorary Ph.D. from the University of Bourgogne in France (1993), the Order of Merit from the Government of Samoa (1004), the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature (2000), New Zealand's Senior Pacific Arts Award (2003) and the NIKKEI Asia Prize in Culture (2003).

He currently holds the Citizens' Chair in English, established in 1965 by the Hawai`i State Legislature to attract individuals of extraordinary scholarly and creative accomplishments to UH Manoa, in order to benefit the academic and the larger communities of Hawai`i. He will be holding the chair, and in residence in Hawai`i, during March of 2006, the scheduled time of production.