Authors

Rosalie Sugrue has been organising programmes all her life. Rosalie went through Girl Guides, helped with Brownies and was a Boys Brigade leader. She has taken leadership in Sundays Schools, Youth Groups and student camps. A feminist at heart, Rosalie was instrumental in bringing women into full membership of New Zealand Jaycees, being the first woman to ever address a Jaycee Conference as a (local) member (Rotorua 1974). She has held various positions in National Council of Women, been the National Programme Convenor of the Methodist Women’s Fellowship and organised countless meetings, socials, and U3A groups. Although retired from primary school teaching, she continues to tutor struggling readers and achieves success by inventing educational games and activities geared to each student’s needs. All games and activities in this book have been successfully used in groups that Rosalie has led. Retired to the Kapiti Coast Rosalie is a lay preacher and has plays, poems, prayers, Bible puzzles and articles published in many church magazines in NZ including a regular Bible Challenge puzzle in Touchstone. She also has work included in devotional anthologies in Canada, the UK and the US. Her prayers have been used in diverse national conferences including Baptist Women in America and Bishops in Ireland.

Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu) is the author of nine books of poetry as well as a graphic novel and an award-winning book of Māori legends for children. He co-edited, with Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri, the anthologies of Polynesian poetry in English, Whetu Moana (2002) and Mauri Ola (2010), and an anthology of Māori poetry with Reina Whaitiri, Puna Wai Kōrero (2014), all published by Auckland University Press. Among many awards, he received the 2022 Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a distinguished contribution to New Zealand poetry. He is associate professor of creative writing at Massey University and has taught previously at Manukau Institute of Technology and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His most recent collection was Tūnui | Comet (Auckland University Press, 2022).

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John Summers is the author of The Mermaid Boy, a collection of non-fiction stories published in 2015 by Hue & Cry Press. His work has appeared in many publications, including The Spinoff, North and South, Landfall, Newsroom, and Sport. He was a finalist in the 2019 Voyager Media Awards and won the nonfiction category in the 2016 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition. He lives in Wellington with his family.

Barbara Sumner has had a long career in film and television and a journalist. She now runs the film production company Cloud South Pictures with her husband, Tom Burstyn. She has produced three feature documentaries, a number of television commercials and instructional films. In 2009 This Way of Life, their documentary movie about a family living simply in the Ruahine Ranges, won awards at film festivals around the world. In 2020 she is enrolled at the IML at Victoria University. She lives in Napier.

Alexander Sunday, the creator of Ariam and the Magic Toothies, has always had a deep-seated love for writing and storytelling. Since his early years, he has envisioned creating something heartwarming to touch the lives of children who read his work. However, it wasn't until he stumbled upon a drawing of his daughter with her first tooth that he felt truly inspired; seeing his daughter's tooth sketch sitting in the memory box for almost two decades ignited his desire to bring the enchanting world of Ariam and the Magic Toothies to life. The author has been brewing this captivating adventure in his creative mind for a long time. Writing this has been a wonderful and therapeutic experience for him. Finally, the time has come to share it with the world, and he couldn't be more excited about it. Alexander Sunday is married to his high school sweetheart, and they have three beautiful daughters and a golden retriever named TokTok. They live in Wellington, New Zealand.

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