Authors

Fran Mazza grew up in an Italian family and travelled back and forth to Italy as a child. Her Italian father taught her to cook, and her Australian mother taught her how to manage money, and what food would be popular 'down under'. But a larger Italian sensibility has been important to Fran - the idea that food binds the family, and that family is more than just people living in the same house. It's the neighbourhood, the community. In her father's town, cafes were places to meet your neighbours and places for your neighbours to meet you. She and her husband and business partner Aaron have tried to make that a part of each cafe they have opened. Fran says "We wanted to introduce more than just good food to our neighbourhood. We wanted people to feel like they were part of a neighbourhood."

Suzi McAlpine is an international speaker, author of award-winning blog The Leaders Digest, and creator of The Leaders Map, an online leadership program for organisations wanting to better equip their emerging leaders. As a leadership development specialist, Suzi writes, coaches and speaks about accomplished leadership. She also specialises in recognising and addressing burnout in organisations, following her own experience and the front-row seat she's had in her role as an executive coach. With a BBS in Management (first class honours), Suzi's career has spanned a variety of industries and positions, culminating in her leading the New Zealand Practice of a division of the world's largest HR consultancy and executive search firm, before moving into the executive coaching world. Suzi has worked alongside CEOs and executive teams in many guises - industry bodies, law and medical groups, corporates, and chambers of commerce. Suzi is passionate about helping leaders to create environments in which people, as well as profits, thrive. She is married with three children and lives in Nelson, New Zealand.

Wellington writer Rachel McAlpine blogs and podcasts about living and ageing and is celebrating her 80th birthday with a book of poems. How to Be Old is an explosion of humanity on the page, some practical tips from the author and sage advice from Elsie aged five. Rachel has also written novels, songs and plays, and books about writing. Her website is writeintolife.com.

Juliet McAra lives in Canterbury. She has spent many years life-drawing with a special interest in portraiture after studying photography at Ilam School of Fine Arts. She has taught art to children and adults in Continuing Education, and now works in a community library.

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Trish McBride spent more than 25 years as a lay chaplain in workplaces, a hospice and a mental health context, and is a retired counsellor and spiritual director. Formal studies included an MA (Hons) in Classics, Diploma in Pastoral Ministry, and recognition as an Associate in Christian Ministry (interdenominational). Her articles and academic papers have appeared in several periodicals in Aotearoa NZ and elsewhere. She was awarded third prize in The (London) Tablet's international John Harriott religious journalism competition in 1993, and contributed chapters to five Catholic-based New Zealand theology books by Accent Publications between 2008 and 2016. These writings have been gathered and supplemented to be the basis of what has now become an accidental trilogy, recording her spiritual journey for most of the last 70 years. Faith Evolving (2005) covered 30 years from the 1970s. Exploring the Presence went backwards, forwards and very widely. And now A Love Quilt covers the last decade. She is passionate about Social Justice, the well-being and stories of women and other marginalised people. She enjoys family, nurturing her friendships, reading, swimming, and walking, as well making quilts, three of which have appeared on the covers of her books.

Jane McCabe is a Melbourne-based historian. In 2007 she visited Kalimpong seeking information about her grandmother. Ten years and one PhD later, she published Race, Tea and Colonial Resettlement: Imperial families, interrupted (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). The book won the ARANZ Ian Wards Prize, and the NZHA Erik Olssen Prize. From 2014 to 2019, Jane was a lecturer in history at the University of Otago. She is currently writing the monograph from her Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden-funded project 'Splitting up the farm? A cross-cultural history of land and inheritance in Aotearoa'.

Claire McCall is an Auckland-based freelance writer who specialises in writing about architecture and design, and contributes to magazines and online media in New Zealand and Australia. Her first book Discover New Zealand Food was published by Chanel Publishers; her second Green Modern: Eco-Conscious Contemporary New Zealand Homes was published by Penguin NZ. This is the first time she has ventured up high mountains and into self-publishing.

Mary McCallum is a writer and publisher who lives in the Wairarapa and Poneke. Her own published work includes award-winning novel The Blue; a poetry book XYZ of Happiness and a children's novel Dappled Annie and the Tigrish. She won the inaugural Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize and her poem 'Sycamore Tree' was selected for Best NZ Poems. She is a director of Mākaro Press and The Cuba Press.

Margaret McCallum began her working life as a primary teacher, but soon swapped it for raising her own three children in multi-ethnic Porirua. She enjoys whatever ‘work’ she finds herself in, whether that be mentoring, writing, clutter-clearing, helping run a community centre or conducting a funeral. For ten years she moved about the UK, listening to life’s call and gathering an assortment of trainings and experiences. Since returning to Aotearoa-New Zealand eight years ago much of her focus has been on researching and pondering our approach to death and dying. A clutch of writing projects is now coming to fruition. Margaret has lived in some of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s beautiful far-flung places, and now calls Wellington home.

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