Vaughan Rapatahana commutes between Hong Kong, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English. He earned a Ph. D from the University of Auckland with a thesis about Colin Wilson and writes extensively about him. Rapatahana is a critic of the agencies of English language proliferation, inaugurating and co-editing English language as Hydra and Why English? Confronting the Hydra (2012 and 2016.)

He is a poet, with collections published in Hong Kong; Macau; Philippines; USA; England; France; India and New Zealand. Atonement was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines (2016); he won the inaugural Proverse Poetry Prize the same year; and was included in Best New Zealand Poems (2017.)

He writes commentaries for Jacket2 (University of Pennsylvania): a 2015–2016 series and again during 2018-2019.  In 2019 he edited an anthology of Waikato poets: Ngā Kupu Waikato.

His New Zealand Book Council Writers File