Authors

Peter Dowling

Falstaff Dowling-Mitchell is an international theatre performer turned award-winning children's novelist. He's had a vibrant career on stage, playing Shrek in Shrek the Musical across five countries, starring as the Fish in Cat in the Hat Live on Stage for seven years, and bringing Melman to life during the Madagascar New Zealand Tour. When not performing, Falstaff is also a dedicated teacher, screenwriter, and filmmaker, with his award-winning works being showcased at international film festivals. His latest book, The Tour, is a heartfelt and hilarious Kiwi novel that takes readers behind the scenes of show business. His novel, White Lies, Maori Legends and Fairytales, is an award-winning story used in over 300 schools nationwide to engage students with the history of Aotearoa. It tells the powerful and engaging story of a boy named Petera and his best mate Hone, growing up in small-town Aotearoa.

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Joe Davis is the co-founder of Nanogirl Labs with Dr Michelle Dickinson and is an innovator and leader. David Downs is a regular speaker and presenter on innovation. He is passionate about innovation and technology in long-term growth, and in his day job as a General Manager at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, he gets to work with innovative companies from around the country to help them grow internationally. He is also well-known as a stand-up comedian, and started one of the many initiatives to support local businesses during lockdown.

Joanne Drayton is an acclaimed New Zealand author whose output is globally recognised. Her book Hudson & Halls- The Food of Love was the winner of the Royal Society Te Aparangi Award for General Non-Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in May 2019, and was a cover story for the NZ Listener in October 2018. Joanne's The Search for Anne Perry was numbered in the top 10 non-fiction books on the New York Times BESTSELLER list. It was a finalist in the prestigious New Zealand Book Awards in August 2013, the subject of a 60 Minutes programme and a cover story for the NZ Listener. It is an 'important' and 'beguiling' read that has received excellent reviews. Both The Search for Anne Perry and Hudson & Halls- The Food of Love have been optioned for feature films. Her critically acclaimed Ngaio Marsh- Her Life in Crime (2008) was a Christmas pick of the Independent newspaper when it was released in the UK in 2009. Her other biographies of expatriate painters include Frances Hodgkins- A Private Viewing (Random House, 2005); Rhona Haszard- An Experimental Expatriate NZ Artist (CUP, 2002); and Edith Collier- Her Life and Work (CUP, 1999). She has curated exhibitions and publishes in art history, theory and biography. In 2007, she was awarded a National Library Fellowship, and in 2017 the prestigious Logan Fellowship at the Carey Institute in Upstate New York. Joanne is a research associate at the University of Auckland and an English teacher at Avondale College. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her partner and three cats.

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Doc Drumheller was born in Charleston, South Carolina and has lived in New Zealand for more than half his life. He has worked in award-winning theatre and music groups and has published ten collections of poetry. His poems have been translated into more than twenty languages, and he has performed in Cuba, Lithuania, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, India, China, Nicaragua, USA, Mexico, El Salvador, and widely throughout NZ. During his travels he represented the Waimakariri District as a Cultural Ambassador to Enshi, China, in a Sister City Cultural Exchange, was appointed as the New Zealand Director of the Silk Road Poetry Project, and represented New Zealand at several international poetry festivals in China and India. Doc Drumheller lives in Oxford, where he edits and publishes the literary journal Catalyst. His most recent collection is Election Day of the Dead, Seventy Haiku from the Americas (Cold Hub Press, 2020). Liang Yujing is a Chinese poet, translator and scholar who writes in both English and Chinese. He was born in Changde and studied for his BA and MA in Wuhan. From 2014 to 2020, he lived in New Zealand and completed his PhD in Chinese literature at Victoria University of Wellington. In late 2020, he returned to China and started working as a lecturer at Hunan University of Technology and Business. His poems and translations have appeared in over seventy literary magazines across the world, including Landfall,  Poetry NZ, Sport and takahē in NZ. His books of translation from Chinese into English include Zero Distance: New Poetry from China (Tinfish Press, 2017) and Dai Weina’s Loving You at the Speed of a Snail Traveling around the World (Cold Hub Press, 2018). He is also the Chinese translator of Best New Zealand Poems 2014 (Wai-te-ata Press, 2016) and Kim Addonizio’s What Is This Thing Called Love (Beijing: Xiron Books, 2020).

J. W. Du