Authors

Rachel is a Pākehā storyteller who was raised in the Waikato and currently lives and works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Kāpiti Coast. Rachel enjoys collaborating with writers, artists and filmmakers on publications, exhibitions and works for screen, and they are a founding member of the four-artist collaborative group, All the Cunning Stunts. A graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts (BA/BFA) and the International Institute of Modern Letters (MA), Rachel was selected for the 2017 Aotearoa Short Film Lab, received a 2018 SEED Grant (NZWG/NZFC) for feature film development, and held a 2019 Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre. Their debut book, One Human in Height (Hue & Cry Press) was published in 2013. As a queer non-binary storyteller Rachel strives to represent the longing for connection and the humour and strangeness that characterise human experience.

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Christina is a writer and professional proofreader living in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Four of her short stories have been published, one in a magazine and the others in anthologies produced by Page and Blackmore, Rangitawa Publishing and most recently in Fresh Ink: Voices from Aotearoa, produced by Cloud Ink Press. As well as being a finalist in the 2020 Ngaio Marsh Awards, Christina’s first crime novel Into the Void was longlisted for the 2019 Michael Gifkins Memorial Prize for an unpublished novel.

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Maris O'Rourke is a former Secretary for Education for New Zealand and Director of Education for The World Bank. This is her sixthchildren's book. She lives and works in Mt Eden, Auckland with her wh?nau. Stephanie Huriana Fong (Te Rarawa, Te Hikut?, Te Aup?uri) isa graduate of Te Kura Kaupapa M?ori and Te Wharekura o Hoani Waititi Marae. She is a certified translator of te reo M?ori who also worksin television and other media. She and her sister Jen Martin are co-directors of their M?ori language consultancy, Pae T? Limited.Stephanie lives in West Auckland with her husband and their two tamariki. Visual artist, painter, printmaker, film director Claudia PondEyley was born in Matamata and attended schools in Montreal and New York. She returned to New Zealand to attend the Elam school ofFine Arts at the University of Auckland and continues to practise from her studio in Mt Eden, Auckland.

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Dr Annette O’Sullivan is a design academic and former senior lecturer in typography at Massey University’s School of Design.

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Vincent O’Sullivan was a poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, and librettist. He was a prolific writer, and one of New Zealand’s best-known. A string of poetry and short story collections preceded his first full-length novel, Let the River Stand (1993), and since then he has written fiction, verse, plays, and librettos in turn. The recipient of many literary prizes and residencies, O’Sullivan was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship in 2004, and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2006. He served as New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2013-15. O'Sullivan passed away in April 2024. Alongside his creative writing, O’Sullivan is a distinguished editor, anthologist, essayist, and biographer. As an academic, he has taught nationally and internationally, receiving numerous visiting fellowships to overseas institutions such as Yale University. This academic history informed his emergence as a Mansfield scholar, beginning with the publication of Katherine Mansfield’s New Zealand in 1974, and asserted most recently in his co-editing of The Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield: Volumes 1-4 (2016). He is the author of the John Mulgan biography Long Journey to the Border: A Life of John Mulgan (2003). Biography and photograph Vincent O'Sullivan.