Rachael King

Rachael King lives in a cold rambling villa in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her first novel, The Sound of Butterflies, won the New Zealand Society of Authors Hubert Church award for Best First Book of Fiction at New Zealand Book Awards. It was published in eight languages other than English. Her second novel, Magpie Hall was published in 2009, and her third, a novel for children called Red Rocks, won the 2013 LIANZA Esther Glen Medal for Junior Fiction and was adapted for television (as Secrets at Red Rocks) in 2025. The Grimmelings was published in 2024 by Allen & Unwin in Australia and New Zealand, and by Guppy Books in the UK, and Margaret K. McElderry in the US in 2025. Violet and the Velvets is her new series, published in 2025.

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Charlotte Lobb

Charlotte Lobb was born and raised on a lifestyle block just out of Hamilton, in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Charlotte kept busy in her earlier years with interests and talents ranging from ballroom dancing, violin, piano and singing, to being a member of the NZ Shooting Team and High Performance Academy for air-rifle shooting.

After leaving school, Charlotte completed a Bachelor in Speech and Language Therapy (Hons) at the University of Canterbury. She now lives in Tauranga, in the sunny Bay of Plenty, with her husband, two children and their fluffy cat.

Along with her passion for words, Charlotte has a desire to bring mental health topics out into the open, and to provide hope for those in need. 'Hannah & Huia' is Charlotte’s debut novel.
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Jacinda Ardern

The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern was elected the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand at the age of thirty-seven, becoming the country’s youngest Prime Minister in more than 150 years. Since leaving office, Ardern has established the Field Fellowship on empathetic leadership. She is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University, continues to work on climate action, and is the Patron of the Christchurch Call to Action to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. Ardern also works on a number of projects that support women and girls, but considers her greatest roles to be those she will hold for life, including that of mum and proud New Zealander.
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Jane Arthur

Jane Arthur was the recipient of the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize in 2018, judged by Eileen Myles. She has worked in the book industry for over fifteen years as a bookseller and editor. She has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the IIML at Victoria University of Wellington. Born in New Plymouth, she lives in Wellington with her family and dogs.
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Tom Percival

Tom Percival writes and illustrates picture books (you know, for kids) as well as illustrating books written by other people. The most well known of these is probably the excellent Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy.

He grew up in a remote and beautiful part of South Shropshire. On reflection this seemed rather more remote than beautiful, owing to the fact that he lived in a small caravan without electricity, mains water or any sensible form of heating. He thinks that he’s probably one of the few people in his peer group to have learnt to read by gas lamp.
Surprisingly enough he has never been called ‘hippy’ (to the best of his knowledge)

Tom now lives in an actual house with his girlfriend and their two young sons.
His favourite colour
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Lili Wilkinson

Lili Wilkinson is the award-winning author of eighteen books for young people, including The Erasure Initiative and After the Lights Go Out. Lili has a PhD from the University of Melbourne, and is a passionate advocate for YA and the young people who read it, establishing the Inky Awards at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. Her latest book is A Hunger of Thorns.
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Natalie Haynes

Natalie Haynes, author of THE FURIES (THE AMBER FURY in the UK), is a graduate of Cambridge University and an award-winning comedian, journalist, and broadcaster. She judged the Man Booker Prize in 2013 and was a judge for the final Orange Prize in 2012. Natalie was a regular panelist on BBC2’s Newsnight Review, Radio 4’s Saturday Review, and the long-running arts show, Front Row. She is a guest columnist for the The Independent and The Guardian. Her radio series, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, was first broadcast in March 2014.
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Stacy Gregg

As a young girl living in New Zealand Stacy Gregg wanted to be two things when she grew up – a horse rider and a writer. She now considers herself very, very lucky to be both at once!

Becoming a writer was the easy part – all she needed was an exercise book and a pen. Stacy wrote loads of poetry and short stories at school and then became a journalist, writing features for magazines and newspapers and working as a fashion writer (v. glamorous and lots of fun!) before her first book in the Pony Club Secrets series was published in 2007.

Extract from author's web page
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Bren MacDibble

Bren lives in Kalbarri on the amazing Coral Coast of Western Australia.

Her first children's novel: How to Bee (2017) won multiple awards, The Dog Runner (2019) and Across the Risen Sea (2020) also won and were shortlisted in multiple awards. The Raven's Song (2022) written with the amazing award-winning Zana Fraillon, has recently been launched.

All her novels are packed full of wild adventures and feature children surviving environmentally changed futures. They are stories that don't mask the realities of the world children see all around them, but do offer hope, safe fictional exploration of climate issues and examples of resilience.

Bren grew up on the land in NZ, and hopes that while children enjoy these wild adventures with colourful cha
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Damien Wilkins

Damien Wilkins writes fiction, and he has published short stories, novels, and poetry. His writing has been described as ‘exuberant and evocative, subtle and exact, aware of its own artifice yet relishing the idiosyncrasies and possibilities of language’. Wilkins has had books published in New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and he has won and been nominated for a range of prizes and awards. He also edited the award-winning anthology, Great Sporting Moments: The best of Sport magazine 1988-2004 published in 2005.
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Catherine Chidgey

Catherine Chidgey is a novelist and short story writer whose work has been published to international acclaim. In a Fishbone Church won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in her region. In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Golden Deeds was Time Out’s book of the year, a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times and a Best Book in the LA Times. She has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fictio
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Kazu Kibuishi

Kazu Kibuishi (born 1978) is an American graphic novel author and illustrator. He is best known for being the creator and editor of the comic anthology Flight and for creating the webcomic Copper. He has also written (drawn) the Amulet series. The webcomic artist and noted critic Scott McCloud has said that some of Kazu Kibuishi's work is so beautifully drawn that "it hurts my hands when I look at it".
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James Russell

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Philip Pullman

Sir Philip Nicholas Outram Pullman is an English writer. His books include the fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, a fictionalised biography of Jesus. In 2008, The Times named Pullman one of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". In a 2004 BBC poll, he was named the eleventh most influential person in British culture. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.
Northern Lights, the first volume in His Dark Materials, won the 1995 Carnegie Medal of the Library Association as the year's outstanding English-language children's book. For the Carnegie's 70th anniversary, it was named in the top ten by a panel tasked with compiling a shortlist for a public vote for
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Emily R. Austin

Emily Austin is the author of EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM WILL SOMEDAY BE DEAD, INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, GAY GIRL PRAYERS, WE COULD BE RATS, and IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP. She currently resides in Ottawa/the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.
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Rachael Craw

Rachael is a reader, dreamer, joker, singer, believer, writer and lover of words.

Author of award winning Spark, Stray, Shield & TheRift (Walker Books Australia and Candlewick Press) and The Lost Saint (8th Note Press and Allen & Unwin NZ)

She lives in NZ and teaches part time while writing her next novel.

Find Rachael on Instagram, TikTok and Threads
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James Russell

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Tessa Duder

Tessa Duder trained as a journalist, and spent fifteen years rearing four daughters before she turned to writing fiction in her late thirties. Her books include the four Alex novels, Jellybean and Night Race to Kawau, as well as ten titles of non-fiction for both adults and young people. She's also an editor, short story writer, playwright and actor. Born in Auckland in 1940, she's lived most of her life there, except for periods spent in England, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Tessa Duder lives in Auckland, New Zealand, where she writes full time.
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Matt Goodfellow

Matt Goodfellow was a primary school teacher for more than ten years before becoming a full-time poet and author. Shu Lin’s Grandpa is his first book with Candlewick Press. He lives with his wife and children in Manchester, England.
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Hannah Tunnicliffe

Hannah Tunnicliffe is the author of several books for kids and adults including The Pool, The Colour of Tea, Season of Salt and Honey, A French Wedding and the trilingual picture book, Marjory and the Mouse. She is the co-creator of the Detective Stanley series published by Flying Eye Books. Her work has featured in the New York Times Book Review and she is the founder and host of the body acceptance podcast, Bod Almighty. She is an eating disorder survivor, career and youth counsellor and holds a degree in social sciences and psychology.
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David Hill

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
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Tina Makereti

Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings is Tina Makereti’s first novel. Her short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (Huia Publishers 2010), won the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards Fiction Prize 2011. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing (non-fiction), and in the same year received the Pikihuia Award for Best Short Story written in English. In October 2012, Makereti was Writer in Residence at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, and in 2014 she is the Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writer in Residence. Makereti has a PhD Creative Writing from Victoria University, and teaches creative writing and English at Massey and Victoria Universities. She is of Ngāti Tūwharet
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Jane Arthur

Jane Arthur was the recipient of the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize in 2018, judged by Eileen Myles. She has worked in the book industry for over fifteen years as a bookseller and editor. She has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the IIML at Victoria University of Wellington. Born in New Plymouth, she lives in Wellington with her family and dogs.
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Steph Matuku

Hi,

I'm based in New Plymouth, New Zealand, but you can find me on Facebook and Bluesky. Feel free to say hi, I'd love to hear from you!

STEPH
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