Authors

Elsdon Best was born at Porirua in 1856, later moving to Wellington with this family. He passed the junior civil service examination and entered the office of the Registrar-General. Indoor life did not appeal to the young man. He worked on a sheep station in Poverty Bay, joined the constabulary at the time of the Parihaka affair, spent some time in Hawai'i, California and Texas, returned to New Zealand, and after working for several years in the Urewera country joined the Lands and Survey Department. During this period, while living among the Tuhoe people, he filled endless notebooks with information which took shape in the present book. Eventually he became an officer of the Dominion Museum, where he compiled the many bulletins, monographs, and ethnological papers for which he is famous. He was a foundation member of the Polynesian Society, and in 1914 was awarded the Hector medal for research in ethnology. Nine years before his death in 1931, Sir Apirana Ngata said of him, 'There is not a member of the Maori race who is fit to wipe the boots of Elsdon Best in the matter of knowledge of the lore of the race to which we belong.'

Ursula Bethell stands with R.A.K. Mason at the beginnings of modern poetry in New Zealand. Born in England, she grew up in New Zealand but did not live there until the 1920s when she came back finally to Christchurch. There she established a garden and began, at the age of fifty, to write poetry. ‘New Zealand wasn’t truly discovered,’ said D’Arcy Cresswell, ‘until Ursula Bethell, “very earnestly digging”, raised her head to look at the mountains.’

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Jill Bevan-Brown is a former lecturer in Inclusive Education. She retired in 2014 to care for her husband Winston, who has advanced Lewy Body Dementia. They live in Palmerston North. Trish Bowles is a Christchurch-based freelance artist who has illustrated more than 30 books, including Home Child (Oratia, 2019). Mahaki Bevan-Brown is a Maori language teacher at Mana Tamariki Kura Kaupapa Maori in Palmerston North.

Mike Beveridge was captain of his school’s First Fifteen and went on to a long rugby career which included several representative honours. He received a Master of Arts with First Class Honours from the University of Canterbury. In 1975, with a friend, he started The Everyman Book and Record Shop in Nelson, which traded successfully for almost forty years. He has lived in Palmerston North, Featherston, Napier, Hastings, Upper Hutt, Wellington, Wanganui, Auckland, Nelson, Christchurch, and Whangamatā, where he currently lives.

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Martin van Beynen is an award-winning writer and journalist for The Press and stuff.co.nz. He is the author of Trapped- Remarkable Stories of Survival from the 2011 Canterbury Earthquake, Penguin, 2012. He was awarded Fairfax Media Journalist of the Year 2010-2011, Senior Reporter of the Year and Senior Newspaper Feature Writer of the Year in the 2012 Canon Media Awards, and the 2013 Wolfson Fellowship to Cambridge University. In the 2010 Qantas Media Awards he won the Story of the Year award for a feature after the trial and acquittal of David Bain and also wrote and voiced the top-rating podcast Black Hands. He lives in Christchurch.

Claire Beynon is an artist, writer and interdisciplinary researcher living in Otepoti Dunedin. Her poetry, flash fiction and short stories have been widely published and anthologised, and she has won or been shortlisted for a number of awards including winning the Takahe Monica Taylor Poetry Prize in 2021 for 'Today's Sky'. She works in collaborative partnerships with scientists, composers, artists and writers around the globe, and two summer research seasons in Antarctica continue to inform her work. Her first collection was Open Book: Poetry & Images.

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Niki Bezzant is a multi-award-winning New Zealand writer, journalist, editor and commentator who has built a reputation for translating complex health and science jargon into easy-to-understand information for everyone over more than 20 years. She founded and edited Cuisine online and as founding editor, took Healthy Food Guide magazine from indie start-up to New Zealand's top-selling food magazine, a position it held for over a decade. Formerly the editor of Thrive magazine, she is a frequent contributor to New Zealand's top print, online and broadcast media including the NZ Listener, RNZ, Good magazine and Newstalk ZB. A trusted advocate and sought-after speaker on menopause/perimenopause and midlife health for women, Niki is passionate about women's health, especially empowering midlife women to become 'vibrant, kick-ass old ladies'. Her first, and bestselling, menopause guide This Changes Everything was published by Penguin Random House in 2022.