Authors

Tom Neale was born in Wellington, New Zealand, but his family soon moved to Greymouth, where his father became paymaster for the state coal mines. Eventually the family settled in Timaru. At 18 Tom signed on as an apprentice engineer in the New Zealand Navy, where he spent four years before buying himself out in order to wander among the South Pacific islands, clearing bush, fishing and preparing copra. He later settled on Moorea, where he learned to speak Taihitian. In 1943 he accepted a job as store-keeper in the Cook Islands, and from there he sailed to Suwarrow.

Emma Neale is a poet and prose writer, whose first novel Night Swimming was published in 1998, followed by her first collection of poetry Sleeve Notes in 1999. Her writing has been featured extensively in journals and anthologies, and in 2000 Neale won the Todd New Writers’ Bursary. Neale’s novel Little Moon (2001) was described by John McCrystal as, ‘flawlessly written, deploying a wealth of descriptive imagery’. Neale won first place in the 2008 Takahe Poetry Competition with her poem 'Well', and was the inaugural recipient of the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2008. Emma Neale won the 2011 Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry and she was the 2012 Robert Burns Fellow at The University of Otago. She also held the 2014 Sir James Wallace Trust/University of Otago Pah Homestead residency. Her book Billy Bird (Penguin Random House 2016) has received excellent reviews and was shortlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Bio and photo courtesy of Read NZ.

Ned Barraud is a Nelson-based illustrator and writer. He has illustrated or co-authored over twenty non-fiction books that introduce children to the natural world around them and encourage them to explore it.

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Eleanor Neil is a first-time author; Shoe Trouble will be her debut children's book. Lisa Allen is a freelance illustrator and designer based in Muriwai on Auckland's west coast. Her work is based mostly in children's book illustration and design. Lisa is a member of the NZSA & SCWBI. She is also volunteer as a role model for Duffy Books in Homes.    

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No biography

Chris Nelson has been a forestry professional for over half a century. Like many in the profession, it has been a tremendously rewarding experience for him, despite the many changes and challenges the industry has undergone during that period.

Dr Wendy Nelson MNZM is currently a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland and Principal Scientist - Marine Biology at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. She specialises in marine phycology, particularly the biosystematics of macroalgae of New Zealand, with research on floristics, evolution and phylogeny, as well as ecology, and life history studies. In 2016, she won the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Aparangi Hutton Medal, awarded for outstanding work by a researcher in New Zealand in the Earth, plant and animal sciences.

Bill Nelson's first book of poetry was Memorandum of Understanding (2016). His poems have appeared in Best New Zealand Poems, Sport, Landfall, Hue & Cry, Shenandoah, The Spinoff, Minarets and The 4th Floor, as well as in dance performances and art galleries and on posters. In 2009 he won the Biggs Family Prize in Poetry from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and he is a founding editor of Up Country: A Journal for the NZ Outdoors. He lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara with his partner and two children, and his dog, Callimachus Bruce.

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No biography