Authors

SARAH MILNE lives by the sea in Christchurch with her three-year old daughter and chocolate lab. After learning to walk and talk in Melbourne, Sarah's family moved back to New Zealand, where she spent her childhood and teen years growing up as a quintessential Kiwi. Her early twenties saw her set off on her OE, spending the next decade living (and dividing her heart) between Australia, England and New Zealand, moving back to Christchurch in 2016 to start her own family. During her pregnancy, Sarah contracted a virus which she was told could have devastating effects on her unborn baby. It was on this journey that she learnt of CMV, the most common cause of non-hereditary deafness and the leading viral cause of disability in newborn babies. Sarah's baby tested negative for CMV at birth, but each year hundreds of babies are born with or develop cytomegalovirus-related disease in Australia and New Zealand, alone. A debut author, Sarah wrote Kiwis and Koalas out of a need to bring Australia and New Zealand together in a story, filling a huge gap on our shelves for the hundreds of thousands of families split between our two countries. It was also an incredible opportunity to subtly normalise differences, because every child deserves to see themselves in a picture book.

Christopher J. Minchin

Graham Minhinnick is a writer and journalist who previously wrote for the New Zealand Herald. Guy Body has worked in New Zealand and the UK as a newspaper artist and cartoonist since 1986. Newspapers he has worked for include the New Zealand Truth, the Scotsman, the Auckland Star, and the New Zealand Herald. He is currently the back-up editorial cartoonist for the New Zealand Herald, preparing the Monday cartoon and substituting for Rod Emmerson when needed.

No biography

David Minty is a children's book author and illustrator. He lives in Auckland with his wife and two boys. For the past ten years, he's worked as a User Experience Designer, and since becoming a father, he decided to start creating picture books.

Tapu Misa is a leading Pacific Islands columnist and was on New Zealand's Broadcasting Standards Authority for six years. She is currently a freelance journalist and has published regular columns in the New Zealand Herald and Mana magazine. Gary Wilson was a co-founder of Mana Maori Media and a driving force for Mana magazine. Throughout his career he has worked to foster Maori and Pacific voices in the media and has publicly criticised the mainstream media for their neglect of Maori news reporting. Today he acts as a trustee of the Mana Trust and is part of the e-Tangata editorial team.

Dr Colin Miskelly is an ornithologist with broad interests, including conservation ecology, biogeography, and the history of science. Employed as a curator of vertebrates at Te Papa since 2010, Colin previously worked for the New Zealand Department of Conservation as a scientist and manager. His research on snipe and seabirds first took him to the subantarctic region in 1982, and has led to an ongoing interest in these remote islands and their spectacular wildlife. Dr Craig Symes has a broad ornithological interest, with a focus, until recently, on Afrotropical birds. As an Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, much of his research focused on bird communities, bird movements and migrations, bird diets and community ecology, parrot biology and conservation, urban bird communities, and birdplant mutualisms focused on pollination in the genus Aloe. He is currently a science teacher in Rotorua, New Zealand.

Graham graduated Waikato University with a degree in chemistry (most of which has been forgotten) and learned biochemistry and quantum physics at level 2. This was followed by various roles in various dairy and food companies, sales, volunteer ambulance, relief teaching, and fibre optic installing. The engineering side of these jobs allowed Graham to keep up to date with emerging technologies such as robotics, genetic engineering, trans-humanism, and related issues.

Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) was a Chilean poet, teacher and diplomat. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, the first Latin American author to be so honoured.

Lissa Mitchell is curator of historical photography at Te Papa and has held previous roles in photographic collection management and preventive photographic conservation roles at the New Zealand Film Archive (now part of Nga Taonga Sound & Vision) and the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa. She has a degree in art history from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Prior to a career in photographic history, Mitchell was an experimental filmmaker.

No biography

Maui John Mitchell is Ngati Tama/Te Atiawa from Mohua (Golden Bay). His great-great-great-grandmother's brother is one of Coates's subjects. John has been Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Canterbury, Warden of the Outward Bound School at Anakiwa, and active in many Maori organisations and issues including Whakatu Marae, Ngati Tama Iwi Trust, Wakatu Incorporation, Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission, the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, and the Foreshore and Seabed movement. Hilary Anne Mitchell is a West Coaster who has been a secondary school teacher, a Nelson City Councillor, a Commissioner appointed by local authorities to hear consent applications, board member of the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology and Nelson Tasman Heritage Trust, and involved in community organisations, especially those concerned with women and employment. Together John and Hilary have operated Mitchell Research since 1985. Over 35 years they have completed hundreds of studies, reports and briefs of evidence on a wide range of topics, including for hearings of the Maori Land Court, Environment Court, High Court, and the Waitangi Tribunal. They have published the four-volume series Te Tau Ihu o Te Waka: A History of Maori of Nelson and Marlborough, which has won a number of awards.