Authors

Sue Marsden is a Palliative Medicine Specialist, moving into palliative medicine after 10 years as an Oncologist, and establishing the first palliative care service at Waikato Hospital. About the same time, she met Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, world renowned thanatologist. This was a pivotal experience both professionally and personally. Dr Ross introduced her to the vital need for self- reflection and self-awareness when working with those approaching the end of life and indeed anyone with loss and grief in their lives. Sue went on to become part of Dr Ross' Australasian facilitating team for her 'Life Death and Transition' workshops. She facilitated at these and similar workshops in New Zealand, Australia, USA, Zimbabwe and South East Asia. At the same time Sue taught palliative medicine, as well as in Australasia, in South East Asia and Samoa. She has served on the Hospice New Zealand Council and the Asia Pacific Hospice and Palliative Care Network Council while working in various hospital, hospice and community settings in New Zealand and Australia as a palliative medicine specialist. Sue has three children and four energetic grandchildren. Whenever she can she skis, walks, travels and reads.

Selina Tusitala Marsh is an Auckland-based Pasifika poet of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. She was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland where she is now an associate professor in the English Department, specialising in Pasifika literature. Her first collection, the bestselling Fast Talking PI, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2010. Marsh represented Tuvalu at the London Olympics Poetry Parnassus event in 2012; her work has been translated into Ukrainian and Spanish and has appeared in numerous forms live in schools, museums, parks, billboards, as well as print and online literary journals. As Commonwealth Poet (2016), she composed and performed for the Queen at Westminster Abbey. She was New Zealand's Poet Laureate from 2017-2019. In 2019 she was awarded a Humanities Aronui Medal and was elected a Nga Ahurei a Te Aparangi Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Jan Marsh M.A. (Hons), Dip.Clin.Psych. practised as a clinical psychologist for 40 years. For the latter part of her career, she worked in private practice, consulting with adults who presented with anxiety, depression and challenging life issues.

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Hannah Marshall has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. She's been a winner of the Maurice Gee Prize in Children's Writing, an NZSA CompleteMS Manuscript Assessment recipient and won the Best Unpublished Author category in the Storylines Tessa Duder YA Award 2024.

Talia Marshall (Ngati Kuia, Rangitane o Wairau, Ngati Rarua, Ngati Takihiku) is a Dunedin-based writer. She has had work published in Poetry magazine, Landfall, Sport, North & South, Mana, Canvas, The Spinoff, Newsroom, Pantograph Punch and with City Gallery. In 2020 she was the inaugural Emerging Maori Writer in Residence at the IIML at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, and in 2021 she won the Newsroom Surrey Hotel Writers Residency.

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Bruce Marshall is a malacologist (shell expert) who has worked at Te Papa, and the previous National Museum, since 1976. As collection manager of molluscs, Bruce is responsible for several million specimens representing more than 4,700 New Zealand species. Kerry Walton is Curator Invertebrates at Te Papa and PhD candidate in the Department of Zoology, University of Otago.

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