Authors

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Good For You, Helen Dew! is the first collaboration between Ali Foster and Catherine Cooper. Ali's picture books include Sam's Bath, Trompet and Trumbone, The Eels of ANZAC Bridge and Elwyn's Dream. Catherine has published two books for adults, The Western Home and White Elephant. They believe that we all have the power to create change through our everyday choices and our collective actions. Nikki Slade Robinson has illustrated over sixty children's books and readers, including many for Duck Creek Press that she has written and illustrated, including the award-winning Muddle & Mo series and The little Kiwi series.

Tate Fountain is a writer, director, theatremaker, and editor based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She is a current member of the Starling editorial committee, and recently coordinated a series of live events for the samesame but different LGBTQIA+ Writers and Readers Festival. She holds a Master of Arts (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland. She’s pretty much always thinking about films.

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Alistair Fox is a New Zealand scholar, former university administrator, and writer who specialises in English Tudor literature and history, New Zealand literature and cinema studies, contemporary literary and film theory, particularly with regard to national identity and the creative process. From 2019-2022, he has regularly written catalogue essays, most frequently for RDS Gallery, Dunedin, which he owned from 2020-2022. Despite his involvement in international scholarship, Alistair Fox has lived his whole life in the South Island of New Zealand, and has developed his career from his base in the University of Otago, where he taught several generations of students for 40 years. A keen tramper who loves the bush and mountains of Te Waipounamu, he has always been especially interested in the influence of the landscape on the New Zealand psyche, a theme that he has recently pursued in studies of art by Otago painters who have exhibited at RDS Gallery, which is now directed by his wife, Hilary Radner.

BETH GRACE FOX was brought up running with horses. Born in Geraldine in the South Island of New Zealand, into a household brimming with books, children and animals, Beth developed a lifelong interest in historical writings. Having studied Middle English and the History of Art and Architecture, Beth spent many years teaching between London and New Zealand, while also travelling extensively in the Middle East. Having raised three sons in New Zealand, Beth's eclectic interests saw her establish a career in the fashion world and later back in London working with ancient maps. Her fascination with Afghanistan and the golden Akhal-Teke horses of Turkmenistan led to her engrossing herself in journals written by intrepid travellers in the 1800s. She lives in Christchurch.

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As a Platoon Commander during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, Brian was badly injured when 15lbs of high explosive detonated a metre behind him. Miraculously healed by prayer, he is now the Director of Charisma Christian Ministries, Auckland, New Zealand. See www.charisma.org.nz Brian wrote, Against the Gates of Hell, which has since been republished as Clash of the Kingdoms. See www.brianfrance.co.nz Brian France's personal story is included in Radical Lives Vol 1 by Janet Balcombe, see www.wildsidepublishing.com/buy-books/radical-lives-1

New Zealand novelist and poet Ruth France was born in Leithfield, North Canterbury, New Zealand in 1913. She published two novels: The Race (1958), which won the New Zealand Literary Fund’s Award for Achievement, and Ice Cold River (1961); and two volumes of poetry: Unwilling Pilgrim (1955) and The Halting Place (1961), under the pseudonym Paul Henderson. She had completed a third manuscript of poetry and was working on a third novel when she died in 1968.

Nicola ‘Niki’ Francis is a Pākehā New Zealander of English, German and Scottish origins. She has lived in the UK, Iraq, Germany, Belgium and Australia and now lives between the sea and the bush in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Prior to doing her PhD on which this biography is based, she worked for human rights and conservation NGOs, as parish minister and hospice chaplain. Niki worked for the Australian Dictionary of Biography and contributed to it as an author, and for Ngā Tāngata Taumata Rau, the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. In Canberra she was a member of the Australian Women’s Archive Project, contributing multiple entries and essays to the online Australian Women’s Register.

Malcolm Francis has spent more than 50 years scuba diving and exploring the seas around New Zealand and the South Pacific Ocean. He was Principal Scientist for Inshore and Pelagic Fisheries at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research until his retirement in 2020. He has authored four previous editions of 'Coastal Fishes of New Zealand', co-authored 'Sharks and Rays of New Zealand', and was the co-editor of the Montana Book Awards finalist 'The Living Reef: The Ecology of New Zealand's Rocky Reefs'

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