Vernice Wineera Pere

**Vernice Wineera Pere** (born 1938) is a New Zealand Hawaiian poet, editor and educator. Wineera has been based in Hawaii since 1960, where she served as vice-president of the Polynesian Cultural Center from 1980 to 1992 and as director of the Pacific Institute at Brigham Young University–Hawaii (where she also taught creative writing and Pacific studies) from 1992 to 2008. In 1978 she was the first Māori woman to publish a poetry collection.