Authors

Sarah Trolle (pronounced Tro-lay) is a primary school teacher and illustrator living near Kina Beach in Nelson, New Zealand. She has always loved painting, drawing and printmaking, and from a young age was inspired by writers and illustrators such as Margaret Mahy, Joy Cowley, Shirley Hughes, Raymond Briggs, Jan Pienkowski and Julie Vivas. She now spends a lot of her time teaching and creating art with children.

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Bruce Trotter is a former lawyer and grandmaster windsurfing world champion. He was once also known as Boris - his 1980s alter ego for whom he bears no responsibility. He grew up on a North Auckland farm where seemingly nothing ever happened - that is, until his mother Maureen helped bring about the advent of New Zealand windsurfing. Bruce was taught to windsurf by his mum, Franny Jones and Linda Stent - all three national champions - as well as the cast of colourful characters who all feature in this book and who each made a lasting impression. Bruce now lives in Russell with his Irish wife and their two children, on a property where the family has planted 110,000 trees.

Jodie has always had a vivid imagination. When she was a wee girl, she had an imaginary friend called, Wolfie. Wolfie was a great friend ... They'd swim together, play jungle-kids together (it involved lots of tree climbing and making of leafy potions), they'd even steal the dog biscuits and gobble them up while hiding in the garage (yes, admittedly that one was a bit strange). However, one unfortunate afternoon, Wolfie misbehaved, and Jodie was forced to discipline him. When her big sister came out to find her in floods of tears, she asked, What's wrong, Joe? Continuing to blubber, Jodie managed to relay what had happened and how terribly naughty Wolfie had been. Are you crying because you are sad then? her sister wondered. No, Jodie responded. I'm crying because Wolfie can't cry, so I have to do it for him! ​This anecdote perfectly sums up Jodie's personality - half in the real world, half in a make-believe land. However, her unique attributes have been the catalyst to many creative endeavours over her thirty-eight-year lifetime. So far, she's been a dancer; dance teacher; cake baker; wedding invitation designer; worked in a few other roles that she doesn't care to list; and now she is an author (by far the most exciting of all). Sometimes, on those very rare occasions, an odd-ball can hit the sweet spot where the facets of a lifetime of experience come together to make a perfect thing. The Zaahli-Shloom series is that perfect thing for Jodie - as she says ... I think everyone should channel their inner odd-ball, you never know what you might discover!

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So Far, published in 2013 by Craig Potton

Denys Trussell lives in Auckland, teaching and performing as a classical pianist. Born in Christchurch in 1946, he’s written on arts and ecology since the 1970s, including biographies on ARD Fairburn in 1984 and on Alan Pearson in 1991. His collected poems, "By Sea Mouths Speaking", was published in 2019. Nigel Brown, born in Invercargill in 1949, now lives in Dunedin. Known as a figurative painter over 50 years, his commitment to issues – human rights, crises in ecology - constantly drives his imagery. The public nature of his work - its social vision – has been recognized with an ONZM.

Chris Tse is a New Zealand poet. A graduate of the IIML, Tse has been published in Sport, Turbine, Landfall, and numerous other literary journals. Much of Tse’s writing reflects his own heritage and cultural concerns, with his verse giving a voice to the Chinese experience in New Zealand. Tse’s debut poetry collection, How to Be Dead in a Year of Snakes, won the Jessie Mackay Prize for Best First Book of Poetry in the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. It was followed by HE'S SO MASC (AUP, 2018) and Super Model Minority (AUP, 2022). Bio and photo courtesy of Read NZ.

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Sarah Tuck is the tour de force behind food & recipe blog www.fromthekitchen.co.nz home in the kitchen for as long as she can and is the CEO of Dish magazine. While Sarah has no formal cooking training, she has been at home in the kitchen for as long as she can remember.