Authors

Dunedin writer Paddy Richardson is a prolific fiction author. She has published two collections of short stories, Choices (Hard Echo Press, 1986), If We Were Lebanese (Steele Roberts, 2003), and seven novels, The Company of a Daughter (Steele Roberts, 2000), A Year to Learn a Woman (Penguin, 2008), Hunting Blind (Penguin, 2010), Traces of Red (Penguin, 2011), Cross Fingers (Hachette, 2013) Swimming in the Dark (Upstart Press, 2014) and Through the Lonesome Dark (Upstart press, May 2017). Four of the last five novels have been finalists in the Ngaio Marsh Award. Paddy has been awarded three Creative New Zealand Awards, the University of Otago Burns Fellowship (1997), the Beatson Fellowship (2007), and the James Wallace Arts Trust Residency Award (2011). Her work had been published in Australia (Macmillan), and translated and published in Germany (Droemer Knaur). Although she has turned to psychological thriller writing more recently, her first novel was a saga of five generations of New Zealand women, described as a ‘lyrical, slow-moving’ and ‘meditative’. Reviewing her more recent novel Cross Fingers, author Nicky Pellegrino wrote: ‘Part thriller, part social comment, part history, this is a very New Zealand story, stylishly written and compellingly plotted’. Paddy’s work has appeared in journals, anthologies, including takahē and Landfall and on radio. It has been highly commended in several writing competitions, including the Katherine Mansfield and Sunday Star Times Short Story Awards. Paddy is an experienced teacher of creative writing and has been a speaker at many writing festivals including the most recent Dunedin Writer and Readers Book Week. In 2012, she represented New Zealand at both the Leipzig and Frankfurt Book Fairs. In 2019 she spent six months in Wellington as the Randall Cottage Writer in Residence. Paddy’s latest novel, By the Green of the Spring, is a sequel to Through the Lonesome Dark, which was shortlisted for The New Zealand Heritage Book Awards and The International Dublin Literary Awards.

A former radio/television presenter, Bill Richardson writes for children and adults. His books include BACHELOR BROTHERS' BED & BREAKFAST, WAITING FOR GERTRUDE, and LAST WEEK. Awards include the Leacock Medal for Humour, the Silver Birch Award, and a B.C. Book Award. In 2021, he and Bill Pechet collaborated on HARE B&B, which was included in The Globe & Mail's favourite 100 books of 2021 and was a Top Recommended Read in the 2022 TD Summer Reading Club. Bill Pechet is an artist and designer whose work explores the spaces between art, architecture, public space, and landscape. His previous collaboration with Bill Richardson -- HARE B&B was a finalist for the 2021 Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, and co-winner of two Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He also illustrated Barbara Nicol's The Lady from Kent.

No biography

Anke Richter is a foreign correspondent, columnist and reporter based in Lyttelton. Before she immigrated with her family to New Zealand, she worked in newsrooms and TV productions in Hamburg and Cologne. Her investigative and personal features are published in New Zealand Geographic, North & South, The Spinoff, Canvas, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, FAZ, taz, and others. She has written three previous non-fiction books that were published in Germany.

Helen Rickerby

Harry Ricketts is a literary scholar, biographer, essayist, reviewer, editor, poet, and teacher of creative writing. His publications include the internationally acclaimed The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling (1999) and Strange Meetings: The Lives of the Poets of the Great War (2010). His recent poetry collections include Winter Eyes (2018) and Selected Poems (2021). With historian David Kynaston, he is the co-author of Richie Benaud's Blue Suede Shoes: The Story of an Ashes Classic (Bloomsbury, 2024). First Things is the first of two memoirs by Harry Ricketts, with Last Things forthcoming.

Judge Rosemary Riddell has led a colourful life, starting in radio and acting, OE, parenthood and then late-start education that saw her become a lawyer in her 40s and go on to be appointed a Family Court Judge. She has also directed films, winning the Moondance Festival in Hollywood with her movie Cake Tin, then directing The Insatiable Moon, which won two NZ Film Awards. She now lives in Otago.

Baye Pewhairangi Riddell (Ngati Porou and Te Whanau-a-Ruataupare) became a full-time potter in 1974, the first Maori artist to commit to this profession. In 1986, with Manos Nathan, he was a co-founder of Nga Kaihanga Uku, the national Maori clayworkers' collective. In 1989 he and Nathan were awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to establish an exchange with Native American artists. He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Craft/Object Fellowship in 2011.

Mike Riddell is the author of novels, non-fiction books, plays, and a screenwriter for feature films. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Otago. He has published internationally with volumes available in several languages. He resides in Central Otago, New Zealand, where he is principal of a small publishing company.

Shona Riddell has a long-held fascination with lighthouses. A writer for 20 years (including her subantarctic history book Trial of Strength with Exisle), Shona lives with her husband and two daughters in Wellington, New Zealand. She enjoys cold, windy weather and stories about remote locations.

Ron Riddell has worked as a teacher, editor and bookseller and has performed his work in many festivals and cultural venues around the world, including The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Harbourfront (Canada), El Festival Internacional de Poesia de Medellin (Colombia), El Festival Internacional de Poesia de Cartagena (Colombia), The Austin International Poetry Festival (U.S.A.), El Encuentro Internacional de Poetas (El Salvador), International Poetry Festival in Costa Rica, Festival de Poesia de Bogota and Chilepoesia in Santiago, Chile. In Auckland in the 1970s Riddell founded The Titirangi Poets and later in the 1990s established a haven for poets with the Live Poets' Cafe which adjoined the Dead Poets Bookshop in Karangahape Road. In Wellington he founded The Wellington International Poetry Festival. A painter, musician and the author of a number of plays and novels, he has published twenty-one collections of verse.