2024
Authors & Speakers

Born and raised in Patea, Airana Ngarewa (Ngati Ruanui, Ngarauru, Ngaruahine) writes about Maori affairs for The Spinoff. His writing has also been published by RNZ, NZ Herald, Newsroom and Landfall. He won the short story and poetry competitions at the Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards in 2022. His debut novel The Bone Tree held the #1 NZ Fiction spot for eleven weeks overall.
E kore e ka te rakau rewarewa E kore e ka te ngakau Ngarewa

Alexa Forbes arrived in Tāhuna Queenstown in 1986 and enjoyed careers in music, journalism, radio announcing and public relations before retraining in sustainability and tertiary education. A fan of arts, sports, community, the environment and the interconnectedness of all things, Alexa works at Otago Polytechnic, and also represents environment and community as a regional councillor.

Angela Thompson is Teacher Librarian and Literacy Lead Teacher at Remarkables Primary School in Queenstown. She is particularly passionate about writers in schools, organising regular Central Otago tours for NZ authors and illustrators. Angela is a regular reviewer for Read NZ and presented at the SLANZA Conference in 2021, where she was awarded the SLANZA award for Excellence.

New Zealander Claire Baylis was a law lecturer at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University for 12 years before moving to Rotorua with her family. There, she worked as an interviewer and researcher for the Trans-Tasman Jury Study, so is one of the few people in New Zealand, Australia and the UK to have interviewed real jurors about real trials. Claire’s fiction has appeared in Landfall, Sport, Takahē, Turbine/Kapohau, anthologised in Horizons 4 and has been read on RNZ. Dice was written as part of a PhD in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka and was included on the Dean’s List for being of the highest academic excellence.

Craig Hoyle grew up in Invercargill within the New Zealand Exclusive Brethren. Separated from public society, he attended Brethren-only schooling and worked in his family’s tyre shop. After facing interrogation and conversion therapy for his sexuality, he was excommunicated from the Brethren and lost his family in 2009. Today he is chief news director for the Sunday Star-Times. He has worked for newsrooms such as TV3 and RadioLive, and behind the scenes on current affairs shows including 60 Minutes. He lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand).

Daren is a poet, writer and musician whose work is influenced and inspired by his Fijian background. From Fiji to Wellington at 17 to busking in Auckland’s CBD as a street poet at 22 in the late 1990s to recording two musical albums in early 2000, Daren is now a dedicated creator and supporter of New Zealand and Pacific poetry with a number of published works and artist/writer residencies to his name. Supported by Pacific Arts – Creative NZ

Debbie is a mother of teenagers, journalist and Queenstown Writers Festival trustee, purely as an excuse to indulge her passion for reading and enjoy the company of like-minded people. She is still dealing with her failed ambition to be a Solid Gold dancer.

Dr. Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and political commentator.
Her podcast on Māori health equity, Getting Better: A Year in the Life of a Māori Medical Student (RNZ/Bird of Paradise Productions) won the Voyager Best Narrative Podcast of the Year in 2021.
In 2020 she won the Opinion Writer of the Year at the Voyager media awards, and her work has featured at newsroom.co.nz, stuff.co.nz, the Guardian, the NZ Herald and in academic and literary journals and books.
Espiner lives in Auckland, where she works at Middlemore Hospital as a surgical registrar.
The memoir There’s a Cure for This is her first book.

Gavin Bishop ONZM (Tainui, Ngāti Awa), is a leading Māori illustrator living in Ōtautahi Christchurch. He has published over 70 books internationally and been translated into 12 languages. Gavin has written for television and theatre, as well as a libretti for the Royal New Zealand Ballet. His awards include the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults multiple times, the Sir Kingi Ihaka award for lifetime contribution to Māori art and culture, and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement – Non Fiction.

After starting with a medical publisher and then Oxford University Press, Harriet Allan worked at Penguin Random House and its earlier iterations for nearly 35 years. She edited and produced books of all genres for both adults and children before becoming fiction publisher in 2000, in which role she published numerous award-winning novels and literary nonfiction titles, working with some of New Zealand’s pre-eminent writers, including Janet Frame, Fiona Kidman, Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, Owen Marshall and Charlotte Grimshaw. She is currently working as a freelance editor, mentor and manuscript assessor. She was awarded an MNZM (New Zealand Order of Merit) for services to publishing in 2024.

Hera Lindsay Bird is a poet from Dunedin. Her debut, self titled book of poetry Hera Lindsay Bird was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press and Penguin UK. She won the Jessie McKay Best First Book Award in 2017, The Sarah Broom Poetry Prize in 2017 and was an Arts Foundation New Generation Laureate in 2018. She is currently working on a novel and interactive text game for kids.

Holly is a book cover designer based in Glenorchy. She specialises in working with indie authors to make their stories shine through custom illustration and hand lettering. Before switching to full-time design, she worked at a company helping indie authors market their books.

Now, along with her design services, she creates resources to help indie authors on their self-publishing journey.

Distinguished Professor Jacinta Ruru (Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui) MNZM, FRSNZ, was appointed as the inaugural Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Māori in March 2024. Her research considers how state legal systems should reconcile with their Indigenous peoples, their laws and knowledges. Her work has advanced options including legal personality of the environment and creating a bijural legal education. Jacinta has been appointed to many working groups and other entities including the NZ Law Society, NZ Law Commission, Royal Society Te Apārangi and the Waitangi Tribunal to provide research informed advice. She is a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and law.

Jacqueline ‘Rock’ Bublitz is a writer, feminist and arachnophobe, who lives between Melbourne, Australia, and her home town on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. She wrote her debut novel Before You Knew My Name after spending a summer in New York. Leave the Girls Behind is her second novel.

Jane Bloomfield is the author of the much loved Lily Max children’s trilogy, published by Luncheon Sausage books. The first novel was a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children & Young Adults, and received a Storylines Notable Book Award. She was the Michael King Writing Centre, Writer in Residence, Summer 2021. Her creative non-fiction and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals.

Jane Shearer is a life enthusiast. She loves (unordered list) gardening, landscaping, song writing, guitar, skiing, reading, mountains, science and research, house design, travelling interesting places, mountain biking, and writing. She lives in Gibbston with her partner.

Jane was excited to release her first novel ‘Broken is Beautiful’ in 2023 and released her second novel, ’Threads of Connection’, in 2024. She writes a regular blog on www.janeshearer.com.

Jude has been researching, writing, producing and directing WWI and WWII content for the past six years. She won the New York Radio Awards Bronze Award in 2023 in the historical documentary category.

Karyn Hay is an award-winning novelist and broadcaster: her debut novel Emerald Budgies won the New Zealand Society of Authors Hubert Church Best First Book Award in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2001. She was awarded a Frank Sargeson Fellowship in 2004; and is a literary advisor to the Frank Sargeson Trust, and mentor for the New Zealand Society of Authors. The March Of The Foxgloves was published in December 2016 and was a No.1 bestseller on the New Zealand Fiction list. Her new novel Winged Helmet, White Horse was published in November 2018 to critical acclaim.

Kate Evans is an award-winning journalist and nature writer from New Zealand. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Observer, Scientific American, National Geographic, Undark, and BioGraphic. She is a regular contributor to New Zealand Geographic magazine and has won multiple national media awards for science and environmental journalism and feature writing. She has also worked as a television producer and video journalist for the BBC, ABC, TVNZ, and the Washington Post, reporting from West Africa, Indonesia, the Whanganui River and the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings.

Kathryn van Beek was the 2023 Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago. Her articles about infertility have appeared on The Spinoff and in The New Zealand Herald. She was the driving force behind the change to the Holidays Act that provides bereavement leave for miscarriage.

Kyle Mewburn is one of New Zealand’s most prolific writers. From multi-layered picture books (Old-Hu-hu; Hill & Hole) to laugh-out-loud junior fiction series (Dinosaur Rescue; Dragon Knight), her titles have been translated into eighteen languages and won numerous awards including Children’s Book of the Year. After 25 years of hiding her true identity, Kyle told her wife Marion that she was transgender. With Marion’s support Kyle flew to Argentina for facial feminisation surgery. Her life story is poignantly described in her memoir Faking it: My life in transition. She was Children’s Writer-in-Residence at Otago University in 2011 and President of the New Zealand Society of Authors from 2013— 2017.

Lil O’Brien is an internationally award-winning copywriter, who has written for many of New Zealand’s top corporates. Her 2020 memoir Not That I’d Kiss a Girl has had a great impact on Aotearoa’s LGBTQ+ community.

Margaret O’Hanlon was born and raised in New York City. She attended an arts college (SUNY Purchase in upstate New York) where she studied film and sociology. She learned and developed her love of scriptwriting while at university. After emigrating to New Zealand she wrote original scripts for nine musicals and a host of smaller stage productions. She is also a writer of short stories and short screenplays. In 2020 Margaret was awarded a New Zealander of the Year Local Hero award for her contribution to the arts in the Wakatipu.

Mike White is an award winning journalist and senior writer for Stuff, and the author of books Who Killed Scott Guy? and How to Walk a Dog. He has recently moved to Central Otago from Wellington.

Nikki Macdonald is an award winning senior writer for The Post and Sunday Star-Times. In more than 20 years as a journalist, she has covered multiple disasters, eaten hospital food for a week, puffed through the police fitness test and reported from inside a nuclear power plant.

A Marlborough Book Festival veteran, she has interviewed many of New Zealand’s literary legends, including Bill Manhire, Owen Marshall, Catherine Chidgey and Emily Perkins.

Olive Jones is one of the founding members of the Graham Downs community, an arable farm purchased near Motueka in the late 1970s. From her teens to her early 30s Olive lived off this land, cultivating self-sufficiency as a way of life, learning to grow and process food, build a house, and farm animals. Her resulting life-long interest in intentional communities has led Olive to study community cultures around the world and resulted in a PhD that documents long-lived intentional communities in New Zealand. Olive continues to be associated with the Graham Downs community, through her role as a trustee of the Renaissance Community Trust that owns Graham Downs.

Paddy Gower is one of New Zealand’s best-known journalists. He spent five years as Newshub’s political editor, before becoming its national correspondent, and more recently he’s been a documentary maker and host of Paddy Gower Has Issues. He won Best Presenter: News and Current Affairs at the 2023 New Zealand Television Awards.

Peter launched Crux after a journalism career in NZ and overseas. He worked for the Otago Daily Times and TVNZ before joining Channels 9 and 10 in Sydney – then the BBC in London. He was the first journalist to be expelled from China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Pip Adam is a writer, novelist and creative writing teacher. She has published five novels and won several awards including the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction for I’m Working on a Building (2013), the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction for the short story collection Everything We Hoped For (2010) and New Zealand’s top literary award, the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for 2018, with The New Animals. Pip says she writes to try and understand things that confuse her. She is currently based in Christchurch, where she holds the University of Canterbury Ursula Bethell Residency in Creative Writing.

Rachael King is a well-known New Zealand writer, reviewer, former literary festival director and ex-bass player. She is the author of Red Rocks, a novel for children which won the Esther Glen Medal in 2013 and is currently in development for television. She has written two adult novels, which have been published in nine different languages.

Rachael was the programme director of the WORD Christchurch Festival for eight years. She received a special award from the New Zealand Society of Authors for her role in securing the freedom of exiled Kurdish writer Behrouz Boochani and in 2023 was named Best Reviewer at the Voyager New Zealand Media Awards.

Whether you’re in the audience, on stage, or on the crew you’re essential to Remarkable Theatre. The Queenstown-based community theatre group has been delivering high quality, entertaining, non-musical theatre works since 2009. They strive to encourage the development of artistic performance, production, and technical skills in a fun and inclusive environment, all while promoting and progressing performing arts throughout the Central Otago region.

Saraid de Silva is a Sri Lankan Pakeha writer and creative based in Tamaki Makaurau. She is the co-creator and co-host of Radio New Zealand’s Conversations with My Immigrant Parents, a podcast and video series in which immigrant whanau across Aotearoa have frank conversations about love, ancestry, home, food, expectation and acceptance.
Saraid was a contributor to A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, and her work has been featured in The Spinoff, Fashion Quarterly, Pantograph Punch and Tupuranga Journal.

Scott Bainbridge is one of New Zealand’s foremost investigative true-crime authors. His first two books, Without Trace and Still Missing inspired the acclaimed TVNZ series The Missing. The Fix was shortlisted for the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Non-Fiction crime writing. Bainbridge is regarded as the New Zealand expert on missing persons and is often asked to comment on cold cases by the media. The Trials of Nurse Kerr is his ninth book.

Sonya Wilson is an author, journalist and the founder and Executive Director of the charity Kiwi Christmas Books. A former television reporter, producer and presenter, she has also written for a variety of websites and magazines. Her debut novel, Spark Hunter, won the Best First Book Award at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

Steve Braunias is the author of 10 books, including Civilisation (winner of the 2013 NZ Post award for best book of non-fiction) and The Scene of the Crime, published by HarperCollins in 2015. He writes for the New Zealand Herald, is the literary editor at Newsroom, and serves as life president of the Hamilton Press Club. He has won more than 40 national awards for writing, including the 2009 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Literary fellowship, the 2010 CLL Non-Fiction Award and the 2006 Qantas Fellowship at the Qantas Media Awards in 2006. With an ability to write across many genres, he has won awards for travel, sports, crime, and food writing, as a book reviewer and humourist. He has won writing fellowships to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995. Her first book, Poūkahangatus (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2018), won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award in 2019. Her second, Rangikura (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2021), was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry in 2022. Poūkahangatus and Rangikura are also published by Knopf in the US and Penguin in the UK. Tayi’s work is widely anthologised and has appeared in Best New Zealand Poems, Granta Magazine, Alta Journal, Literary Hub, and The New Yorker.

Tracey Roxburgh has been a journalist for two decades, starting off at The Southland Times in Invercargill before joining Allied Press in 2006.
She was appointed editor of Mountain Scene in March, 2020 — that year Scene was runner-up in the Voyager Media Awards community newspaper of the year category; it was a finalist in 2021. This year it was runner-up in the New Zealand Community Newspaper Awards in the same category. Tracey is also Otago Daily Times Queenstown bureau chief.

Tusiata Avia is a poet, writer and performer. She has published five books of poetry, children’s books, short films, radio documentaries and plays. Her iconic play Wild Dogs Under My Skirt showed Off-Broadway in 2020, where it won the Fringe Encore Outstanding Production of the Year.

Tusiata was awarded a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry and the arts and an Arts Foundation Laureate in 2020; Distinguished Alumni at Te Herenga Waka University of Victoria, 2023; and in 2024, the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement.