Authors

Stan Walker is a trans-Tasman musician, performing artist and actor. He was born in Melbourne and grew up between Tauranga, New Zealand, and Ocean Shores, New South Wales. Walker was the winner of the seventh and final season of Australian Idol in 2009, and was a judge on the first and second season of The X Factor NZ, in 2013 and 2015. Over the past decade Walker has become one of Aotearoa's most respected figures, and continues to devote much of his life to his family, his people, and to maoritanga. Stan has earned eight gold and five platinum singles as well as one double platinum and one triple platinum single in New Zealand. Along the way, Walker has received eight New Zealand Music Awards and five ARIA Music Award nominations. He's won the Waiata Maori Award for Radio Airplay Record of the Year five times, in 2010, 2011 and then three consecutive years in a row from 2013 to 2015. Walker has also appeared in the feature films Mount Zion (2013), Born to Dance (2015) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016). He currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

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Barbara Walker was called by God to become a missionary nurse at the early age of 13. Little did she know that she would end up working in some of the toughest places in the world over several years. She has had a multitude of roles including nurse, midwife, eye surgeon, anaesthetist, dentist, car mechanic, vet, plumber, carpenter, health manager, and she is also an Anglican Priest. Presently, Barbara is Lead Chaplain at the Hawkes Bay Soldiers' Memorial Hospital in Hastings, New Zealand, and a Regional Chaplain Manager for the Interchurch Council for Hospital Chaplaincy. The Bible verse, 1 Thessalonians 5:24 "The One who calls you is faithful, and He will do it." has remained very special for Barbara. It has given her great strength to keep going, seeking to save lives and do her best as she faced challenges and situations which were way beyond her ability to handle, including a death threat and serious illnesses.

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Brydie Walker Bain is a high country poet whose work has appeared in the Dominion Post, Stuff and Calico Publishing. She has been short-listed for the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award and her plays have enjoyed sell-out seasons and readings in Hamilton, Auckland and London.

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Louise Wallace is the author of three previous collections of poems. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal publishing the work of young writers from Aotearoa, and the editor of Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2022. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2008, winning the Biggs Prize for Poetry, and was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin in 2015. She grew up in Gisborne and now lives on the Otago Peninsula in Ōtepoti with her husband and their young son.

Desna Wallace is a school librarian in Christchurch who is passionate about children’s books. After Desna left school she spent a number of years travelling overseas before coming back to New Zealand to raise her family. Desna takes any chance she can to read children’s and young adult books. Reading, she believes, is one of the best ways to improve your own writing. Desna has had a number of plays, poems and stories published in the School Journal, but this is her first novel.

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