Authors

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Bob Kerr has written and illustrated a range of picture books for children. Kerr’s own junior novel, The Optimist (1992), about sailing misadventures, won the 1993 Best First Children’s Book Award. He published a collection of short stories for 8 to 12-year-olds in 1998, Strange Tales from the Mall, which was short-listed for the 1999 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards. His pictorial history book, After the War (2000), was short-listed for the 2001 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. Biography and photo courtesy of Read NZ.

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Rachel Kerr is a Wellington writer who lives in Island Bay with her family. She is studying te reo Māori and has degrees in film and creative writing. Rachel has worked as a librarian for Te Kooti Whenua Māori and Judicial Libraries. Victory Park is her first novel.

Ulrika Kestere is a photographer, illustrator and graphic designer based in Lund, Sweden. Her first children’s book was translated into multiple languages, and Otto Goes North is her second book. Kestere was born in Latvia. She loves the outdoors and the rough Scandinavian weather, and Norway’s Lofoten islands inspire many of her illustrations.

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Jacquie Kidd, Ngapuhi, is a nurse by training and a researcher at heart. She has spent decades examining inequities and racism in the health system and uses story and poetry to bring whanau voices to the forefront of cancer care and research. A professor of Maori health at the Auckland University of Technology, Jacquie has a clinical background in nursing and almost two decades of expertise in whanau-focused Maori health equity research. Her research has concentrated on kaupapa Maori projects that have gathered whanau stories to help develop solutions to health inequities. Significant projects that Jacquie has worked on include health literacy for Maori in palliative care; Oranga Tu, on prostate cancer for tane Maori; and Ha Ora, on improving early diagnosis of lung cancer for Maori. Her current work includes lung cancer screening for Maori, whanau hauora assess ment in the cancer pathway and anti-racism practice in healthcare. She is a trustee and co-chair of Hei Ahuru Mowai, the Maori Cancer Leadership group, and a keynote speaker at the World Indigenous Cancer Conference in Aotearoa in 2026. Jacquie lives in Ahuriri Napier with her husband and two dogs, just a short drive from her five mokopuna.

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Fiona Kidman is a leading contemporary novelist, short story writer and poet. Much of her fiction is focused on how outsiders navigate their way in narrowly conformist society. She has published a large and exciting range of fiction and poetry, and has worked as a librarian, producer and critic. Kidman has won numerous awards, and she has been the recipient of fellowships, grants and other significant honours, as well as being a consistent advocate for New Zealand writers and literature. She was awarded an OBE and a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature. In May 2019 at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Kidman won the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for her novel This Mortal Boy.

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