Authors

HINEMOANA BAKER is a poet, musician and creative writing teacher. She traces her ancestry from Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa and Ngāi Tahu, as well as from England and Germany (Oberammergau in Bayern). Her previous poetry collections are mātuhi | needle (co-published in 2004 by Victoria University Press and Perceval Press), kōiwi kōiwi (VUP, 2010) and waha | mouth (VUP, 2014). She has edited several online and print anthologies and released several albums of original music and more experimental sound art. She works in English, Māori and more recently German, the latter in collaboration with German poet and sound performer Ulrike Almut Sandig. She is currently living in Berlin, where she was 2016 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer in Residence, and completing a PhD at Potsdam University.

Dr Kirsty Baker is an art historian, curator and writer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara where she currently works as a curator at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi. She completed her PhD in art history at Victoria University of Wellington—Te Herenga Waka, where her thesis ‘Constituting the “Woman Artist”: A Feminist Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Art History 1928–1989’ was awarded a place on the prestigious Doctoral Dean’s List for 2020. Alongside this academic research, Baker’s writing on contemporary women artists in Aotearoa has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Art New Zealand, The Pantograph Punch, Artist Profile, Femisphere and Art and Australia. She has also written essays on women artists and feminist art histories for a range of publications including Flora: Celebrating Our Botanical World (Te Papa Press, 2023), The Dialogics of Contemporary Art: Painting Politics (Kerber Verlag, 2019), Embodied Knowledge / Can Tame Anything (The Dowse Art Museum, 2019), Jacqueline Fahey’s Suburbanites (New Zealand Portrait Gallery, 2019) and All Lines Converge: Some Lines Through the Archive (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2017).

Tīhema Baker (Raukawa te Au ki te Tonga, Ātiawa ki Whakarongotai, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira) is a writer and Tiriti o Waitangi-based policy advisor from Ōtaki. He has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, for which he wrote this novel. He has previously published a trilogy of sci-fi novels, including Watched (Huia, 2014).

RHIANNON BALDOCK is a trained chef and self-taught food photographer and stylist. She has had her work featured in

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Mason Ball was born in 1966 and grew up in Gisborne on the farm that would inspire some of New Zealand's most beloved and iconic comic strips. He has worked as a journalist, audio sub-editor and English language teacher. He lives with his wife, Kuniko, and their three children in Wellington, where he enjoys painting, collage and jazz.

No biography

Alison Ballance is a zoologist, writer and broadcaster. In 2017 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to natural history, filmmaking and broadcasting. In 2008 she began producing and presenting Radio New Zealand's weekly science and environment programme Our Changing World. Before that she spent 18 years producing and directing wildlife documentaries for NHNZ, including the film To Save the Kakapo. She has written 30 books, including 'Hoki: The story of a kakapo' and the biography of conservationist Don Merton. The first edition of 'Kakapo: Rescued from the brink of extinction' drew on her long association with the Kakapo Recovery Programme and won the 2011 Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize. It was revised and republished in 2018.

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Maddie Ballard is a writer and editor of mixed Chinese heritage. Born in Syracuse, New York, she grew up in Aotearoa New Zealand and currently lives in Wellington. She can be found @maddieballard27 on Instagram or at fieldnotesonfeeling.substack.com.

A graduate in horticulture from Massey College in the 1960s, Catherine Ballard has been involved in horticulture, including writing, all her life. In 2006 David Ling published Oswald Blumhardt New Zealand Plant Pioneer, her biography of the internationally recognised plant collector and hybridizer. In 2010 she self-published Stone Wall Country - The Dry Stone Walls of the Whangarei District. In 2015 she published Country Cop 24/7 - The Life and Times of a Rural Cop. She has lived in Northland most of her life, farming and growing plants.