Authors

Pat Backley is an author, born in England but now based in Auckland, New Zealand. She is a mother to one beautiful daughter. Passionate about people and travelling the world, she has spent 70 years living a colourful and interesting life and her books reflect these passions. She has always been fascinated by social history and the lives of ordinary people and believes their stories should be told. "It is a way of honouring my ancestors. They have no voice, so I will make sure their stories are heard." Her published books include DAISY a historical family saga (1887 -1974) and her own memoirs: FROM THERE TO HERE, WITH AN AWFUL LOT IN BETWEEN. She has also co-authored: THE WARRIOR WOMEN PROJECT. A SISTERHOOD OF IMMIGRATION To learn more about Pat, visit her website: www.patbackley.com

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CATHERINE BAGNALL grew up on the bushy eastern shore of the inner Wellington Harbour, where her interest in mythological worlds and enchanted natural spaces began. Inspired by Rosi Braidotti’s theories of the post-human and especially the idea of ‘a new love of the world’, Catherine’s work depicts the twenty-first century life of non-human creatures and forest-dwelling girls in the wild green places of the natural living world. She says: ‘I think trees are so utterly important — I worship them.’ A recognised experimental watercolourist, maker of objects and performance artist, she also lectures in fashion, art and design. L. JANE SAYLE grew up on the south coast of Wellington. She has been a dealer in curios and ephemera, an art writer and reviewer, a lecturer in the history of New Zealand visual culture and a traveller. In 2021, collaborating with Catherine Bagnall, she published On We Go, a book of poems and paintings exploring personal connections with the natural world in the context of the feminine sublime.

Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe (1884-1968) was born on 10 February 1884, at Turua, near Thames, in the Waikato. Her father was Richard Wellington Bagnall and her mother Lydia Chadwick Lamb. She had three siblings, Ella, Edith and Stanley. She lived at Turua until her marriage in 1913 to Wallace Fletcher Metcalfe, a descendant of Fletcher Christian who led the mutiny on the Bounty. They moved to their farm, Kiritahi, which was near Te Araroa on the East Coast of the North Island. They had three children: Richard (Dick), Muriel (Wendy) and Beverly (Bev). In her retirement, Shirley wrote the story of her life in three Warwick Jotters. Shirley died in 1968 and is buried, with Wallace, in the Alexander Redoubt Cemetery, near Tuakau.

Gary Baigent is a key figure in the emerging moment of contemporary New Zealand photography of the late 1960s. Born in Wakefield, Nelson, in 1941 he majored in painting at the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts, Christchurch from 1960 to 1962. Baigent began working on The Unseen City: 123 photographs of Auckland, a book on Auckland’s urban life, published in 1967, with its contrasty, grainy images shot on the streets, in backyards and pubs, on the wharves and in student flats. The book was polarising but it also helped stimulate a new style of photography. John Fields (1938-2013) was born in Massachusetts, USA and was educated in Rockport, a New England artists’ colony. He learned to photograph while in the US Navy and became a commercial photographer in the early 1960s before working as a specialist in electron microscope imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He emigrated to New Zealand in 1966 to continue working in this sphere at the University of Auckland. He also brought an expectation that photography was better recognised within the arts in his adopted country. To this end in 1970, he organised a cooperatively published booklet of the work of ten contemporary photographers, Photography: A visual dialect – the first such publication in New Zealand. He was also responsible for one of the first exhibitions of contemporary photography at a dealer gallery: a group exhibition at Barry Lett Galleries in 1972. Max Oettli was born in Switzerland in 1947 and migrated to New Zealand with his family in 1956. He was brought up in Hamilton and was a trainee press photographer at the Waikato Times over university vacations from 1966 to 1969. He applied this experience to his work on the student newspaper Craccum while he studied English, history and art history at the University of Auckland. From 1970 to 1975 Oettli was a technical instructor in film and photography at the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts. For some of this time, he was also the founding president of PhotoForum, a group advocating for and promoting expressive photography.

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Jake Bailey is an internationally acclaimed educator on resilience, the author of the number one bestseller What Cancer Taught Me and, as a Commonwealth Study Conference alumnus, has been recognised as one of the most promising emerging leaders across the Commonwealth.He has developed resilience strategies for corporations, governments, schools and sports teams across the globe, educating a range of audiences on evidence-based tools that enable us to most effectively overcome the challenges we all face in life. Jake lives in Arrowtown, New Zealand.

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Judy Bailey (ONZM) is a writer and former broadcaster living in Auckland. She fronted primetime news for twenty-six years, becoming one of the most recognised faces in New Zealand. On leaving TVNZ, she co-presented Māori Television's ANZAC Day programme for many years. She is a founding member and patron of Brainwave Trust Aotearoa, and an active patron of organisations including the National Collective of Women's Refuges, Hospice North Shore, Skylight Trust, the Grief Centre and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. She is married to producer and director Chris Bailey, with whom she has three children and seven grandchildren.

Martin Bailey is highly regarded by major publishing houses in New Zealand, Australia and the United States and has written and/or illustrated more than 100 children's titles including many for the education sector. He has written books for a diverse range of publishers including Wendy Pye Publishing, Scholastic, Pearson and Murdoch.

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