UPNG loses a writer and senior academic

ONE of the country’s great writers, academic Dr Regis Stella died on Wednesday.
Papua New Guinea would have been celebrating his work as he was to have launched his third book, Unfolding Petals: Readings in Modern PNG Literature today.
The senior lecturer in the Literature and English Communication strand at University of Papua New Guinea was from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.
He was described by colleague and fellow writer Dr Steven Winduo as “reserved, but an intelligent and hardworking person”.
Dr Stella holds a doctorate from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and had been teaching at UPNG since he became a teaching fellow in 1988.
Apart from his teaching career, he had once been the Deputy Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science and was formerly director of the Melanesian Institute of Arts.
He has written two books and edited three others before his third work.
Dr Winduo said Dr Stella’s first book, Gutsini Posa won him a prize in the national literature competition in 1999.
He said Dr Stella’s thesis on re-emerging PNG through literary publication was one of the best ever written and had the rare opportunity to be converted into a book that was now a recommended text in universities.
The body of the late Dr Stella will be flown to his home province next Wednesday.