Carl Stead is a critic, editor, poet, novelist, and educator. He is from New Zealand. Stead was a professor of English at Auckland University and served on the New Zealand Literary Fund Advisory Committee. He was given a third place Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Award in 1972 for Smith's Dream. He won a New Zealand Book Award in Poetry in 1976 for Quesada and a New Zealand Book Award in Fiction for The Singing Whakapapa in 1995. Stead is the only person to have won the New Zealand Book Award for both poetry and fiction.