Romesh Dissanayake

romesh dissanayake is a Sri Lankan and Koryo Saram writer, poet and chef from Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. His work explores ideas of identity, migration, decolonisation and place. romesh's poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in various print and online publications. His first novel, When I open the shop, was the winner of the 2022 Modern Letters Fiction Prize and is published by Te Herenga Waka University Press. His chapbook poetry collection, ‘Favourite Flavour House’, is featured in AUP New Poets 10 published by Auckland University Press. He has cooked at Mabel's Burmese Eat and Drink Shop and Rita in Aro Valley.

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Alex Scott

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Emily Perkins

Emily Perkins is a writer of contemporary fiction, and the success of her first collection of stories, not her real name and other stories, established her early on as an important writer of her generation. Perkins has written novels, as well as short fiction, and her writing has won and been shortlisted for a number of significant awards and prizes. She was the 2006 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow, and she used the fellowship to work on her book, Novel About My Wife, published in 2008. She is an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award winner (2011).
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Pip Adam

PIP ADAM gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Victoria University in 2007. Her work has appeared in Sport, Glottis, Turbine, Lumiere Reader, Hue & Cry, Landfall and Blackmail Press. Her work has also appeared in publications produced in conjunction with two exhibitions at the Wellington City Art Gallery and her reviews have appeared in Metro. She is currently working toward her PhD Creative Writing at Victoria University. Her PhD project explores how engineers describe the built environment. She is using this research to write stories about our relationships with built forms and the structures that hold them up.

Everything We Hoped For won the NZ Post Best First Book Award in 2011 and is an unusually strong first book, dist
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Joanna Cho

Joanna Cho was born in South Korea and currently lives in Wellington. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2020 and received the Biggs Family Prize in Poetry.
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Joy Holley

Joy Holley lives in Pōneke. Her debut collection of short fiction Dream Girl was recently published by Te Herenga Waka University Press. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2020. Her writing can be found in journals and anthologies in Aotearoa and overseas, including Starling, The Pantograph Punch and Sweet Mammalian.
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Louise Wallace

Louise Wallace is the author of four collections of poems, and the novel Ash. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal publishing the work of young writers from Aotearoa, and the editor of Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2022.
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Emily Perkins

Emily Perkins is a writer of contemporary fiction, and the success of her first collection of stories, not her real name and other stories, established her early on as an important writer of her generation. Perkins has written novels, as well as short fiction, and her writing has won and been shortlisted for a number of significant awards and prizes. She was the 2006 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellow, and she used the fellowship to work on her book, Novel About My Wife, published in 2008. She is an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award winner (2011).
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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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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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Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

Ngahuia Te Awekotuku MNZM (1949– ) is a New Zealand academic specialising in Māori cultural issues and a lesbian activist. She is descended from Te Arawa, Tūhoe and Waikato iwi.

As a student Te Awekotuku was a member of Ngā Tamatoa a the University of Auckland, her MA thesis was on Janet Frame and her PhD on the effects of tourism on the Te Arawa people. She has been curator of ethnology at the Waikato Museum; lecturer in art history at Auckland University, and professor ofMaori studies at Victoria University of Wellington. She is currently 'Professor of Research and Development' at Waikato University.

In 1972, Te Awekotuku was denied a visitors permit to the USA on the grounds that she was a homosexual. Publicity around the incident was a ca
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Louise Wallace

Louise Wallace is the author of four collections of poems, and the novel Ash. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal publishing the work of young writers from Aotearoa, and the editor of Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2022.
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Charity Norman

Charity was born in Uganda, brought up in draughty vicarages in Yorkshire and Birmingham, met her future husband under a lorry in the Sahara. She worked as a barrister in York Chambers, until - realising that her three children had barely met her - she moved with her family to New Zealand and began to write.

After the Fall/Second Chances was a Richard & Judy and World Book Night title, The New Woman/ The Secret Life of Luke Livingstone a BBC Radio 2 choice. See You in September (2017) was shortlisted in the Ngaio Marsh Awards. The Secrets of Strangers was a Radio 2 choice and shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh and Ned Kelly Awards. Her seventh, Remember Me, was published in March 2022.
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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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Naomi Arnold

Naomi Arnold is an award-winning journalist based in Nelson, New Zealand.
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Dominic Hoey

Dominic Hoey is a poet, author and playwright based in Auckland, New Zealand.

His debut novel Iceland was a New Zealand bestseller, long-listed for the 2018 Ockham Book Award and his short story 1986 won the 2021 Sunday Star Times Short Story Award. His latest poetry collection I Thought We’d Be Famous was released in October 2019.

Dominic has written and performed two one-person hit shows about his bone disease and his inability to get arts funding. In a former life, Dominic was an MC battle and slam-poetry champion.

Through his Learn To Write Good creative writing course, Dominic has taught hundreds of students around the world how to think dyslexic.

He also works with young people through the Atawhai program, teaching art, yoga and meditati
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Michael Bennett

Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an award-winning screenwriter, director, and author whose films have been selections at major festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and New York. His nonfiction book, In Dark Places, which explored an infamous miscarriage of justice, won awards, and his young adult graphic novel, Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas, was a finalist for the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards.

source: Amazon
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Becky Manawatu

Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu) was born in Nelson in 1982, raised in Waimangaroa and has returned there to live with her family. She worked as a reporter for The News in Westport.

Becky’s short story ‘Abalone’ was long-listed for the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, her essay ‘Mothers Day’ has been selected for the Landfall anthology Strong Words.

Auē is her first novel & it won both the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and the Hubert Church Prize for best first book of fiction at the 2020 Ockham Book Awards.

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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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Emma Espiner

Emma Espiner (née Wehipeihana) is a New Zealand broadcaster and political commentator. In 2020, she won Opinion Writer of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.

She is a columnist for Newsroom and hosts a podcast Getting Better for Radio New Zealand about Māori health equity.

Abridged from Wikipedia
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Ruby Tui

Ruby Tui is a professional rugby player and a bestselling author. She won an Olympic gold medal in 2021, an Olympic silver medal in 2016, a Rugby World Cup Sevens title in 2018 and a Rugby World Cup title in 2022.

Her memoir Straight Up was the bestselling book in New Zealand in 2022, and Ruby's brilliant rugby skills and amazing personality won the hearts of New Zealanders, culminating in her shortlisting for the New Zealander of the Year.

She was named Black Ferns Sevens Player of the Year in 2017 and World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year in 2019. Transitioning to the 15s game in 2022, she won the inaugural Super Rugby Aupiki competition with the Chiefs Manawa and then made her debut for the Black Ferns, helping them win the 2021 Rugby Worl
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Olive Nuttall

Olive Nuttall completed an MA in Creative Writing in 2022 at Te Pūtahu Tuhi Auaha o te Ao, the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the 2022 Adam Foundation Prize.

from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University's website
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Sacha Cotter

Sacha is a children's writer based in Wellington, New Zealand.

She is the author of picture books Keys, Ngā Kī, The Marble Maker, and Te Kaihanga Māpere.

Her third picture book with HUIA Publishers, The Bomb, will be released later in 2018.

Sacha is also involved in writing for The Kiddets, an animated children’s television show produced by Pukeko Pictures.

Before publishing her first book Keys, Sacha gained an arts degree and a teaching diploma. Whilst living in Valencia, Spain, Sacha completed several short film courses. During this time her short script 'Wasabi Peas' was a semi-finalist at the 2013 L.A Comedy Shorts Festival.

Since returning to New Zealand Sacha has completed the Writing for Children Workshop and the Television Master Clas
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