Celestine Vaite met an Australian surfer in 1982, aged sixteen, and moved with him to Australia when she was twenty-one, settling with her family on the south coast of New South Wales. She has had stories published in Australian Short Stories and the Australian Multicultural Book Review. Her first novel, Breadfruit, won the 2004 Prix litteraire des etudiants for a novel published in French Polynesia and has been translated into German and French.