Academy of New Zealand Literature

Janet Charman writes poetry and literary criticism. Known for her distinctive voice and content she has published ten poetry collections, most recently, The Pistils (2022) and The Intimacy Bus (2025), both through Otago University Press. In 2008 Janet received the Best Book of Poetry Award at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards for her collection, Cold Snack, and in 2010 she was co-winner of the IWW Kathleen Grattan Prize (Auckland) for an unpublished sequence of poems for At the White Coast. In 2023, The Pistils was runner up in the 2022 NZSA New Zealand Heritage Literary Awards and longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. Janet identifies as a lesbian and her poems draw on issues that relate specifically to women, including topics such as sexuality, agency, and m/Otherhood. She is known for her stylistic choices such as using limited punctuation and capitalisation, including lowercase for the pronoun ‘I’. Otago University Press describes Janet as ‘a complete original, utterly distinctive in voice and content’. Reviewer Elizabeth Morten describes how Janet’s poems ‘storm the pages with the politic and the personal, with cutting wit and the blunter edges of the domestic scape’.

Janet has published poems in several Australian journals and widely in Aotearoa New Zealand journals. Her work appears regularly in numerous anthologies, including Contemporary New Zealand and Best New Zealand Poems. She was a University of Auckland Literary Fellow (1997 Writer in Residence), was the recipient of a month-long visiting fellowship at the International Writers Workshop of Hong Kong Baptist University (2009) and was Guest Reader at the Taipei International Poetry Forum (2014). Throughout her career Janet has supported her work as nurse, telephone operator and teacher, and with formal recognition for her writing through several Creative New Zealand projects grants and a Major Project Grant from the Literary Fund of the Q.E.II Arts Council. In 2026 she will receive an Alumna Award for Distinguished Achievement through the Spotswood College Alumni Trust.

In addition to her poetic work, Janet has an MA in English from the University of Auckland for which she completed a thesis on the novels of Jane Austen. Since 2017 her gender critical feminism has been expressed through the lens of the Matrixial theories of post Freudian feminist theorist and artist Bracha L. Ettinger, specifically Ettinger’s foundational publication, The Matrixial Borderspace (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Janet’s monograph, SMOKING: The Homoerotic Subtext of Man Alone, A Matrixial Reading (Genrebooks, Dunedin, 2018), is free to download, with a hardcopy forthcoming from Steele Roberts.

In her most recent poetry collection, The Intimacy Bus (Otago University Press, 2025) Janet reckons with some of life’s heaviest traffic: bereavement, grief, ageing, loneliness, gender, sexual identity, power and inequality. Shorn of sentiment, direct and uncompromising, The Intimacy Bus arrives as an irrepressible affirmation of love, life and lesbian desire.

Janet’s creative memoir, 28 days (Skinship Press, 2025), brings together her sharp, poetic voice with the evocative, observational sketches of artist Elizabeth Anderson. In 28 pairings of image and text, the book moves through a cycle of emotional, social, and sexual reflections, snapshots of life in New Zealand Aotearoa that are both personal and powerfully resonant.

She is currently working on a new poetry collection with the working title ‘shop girl’.

 

 

Links

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Otago University Press writer page

Auckland University Press writer page

ANZRB review of The Intimacy Bus (April, 2025)

Audio: Radio NZ review of The Intimacy Bus (March, 2025)

Spinoff feature ‘Backstory: Janet Charman on the losses we can prevent, and those we cannot‘ (May, 2022)

NZ Poetry Shelf review of The Pistils (April, 2022)

ANZRB review of The Pistils (March, 2022)

 

 

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Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Hinerangi) is an award-winning author and filmmaker. His published works span an unlikely range of the Dewey Decimal System classes, from fiction to non-fiction to YA graphic novel to time travel. Michael’s Hana Westerman series, beginning with Better The Blood (2022) and followed by Return To Blood (2024) and Carved In Blood (2025), has been described as the first crime thriller novel series about a Māori cop, written by a Māori author. The series is included in the curriculum for NCEA level 2 and level 3 students at multiple secondary schools across Aotearoa.

Better the Blood, his debut novel, was published in New Zealand, UK, USA and Australia, with ten translations. It was shortlisted or won numerous awards nationally and internationally, including finalist for the premiere NZ literary award, the Jann Medlicott Fiction Prize at the 2023 Ockhams. Better The Blood was finalist for the Barry Awards (USA) and won Best First Novel at the Ngaio Marsh Awards, making Michael the only author to win a Ngaio for both fiction and non-fiction. In the feature ‘Five Great Crime Novels With Something To Say’, The Spinoff (NZ) wrote that Better The Blood has ‘a thrilling and compelling plot’ but also is ‘an intelligent and easy to read social commentary of colonisation and the reality of being Māori in 2023.’ David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of Winter Counts describes the book as:

‘Stunning. Better the Blood is a tremendous debut, and Hana Westerman, the Māori detective at the center of the story, instantly becomes one of the great characters in crime fiction on any continent. This novel has it all:  a gripping mystery, complex and memorable characters, and timely social and cultural commentary.’

Michael’s first published book was the result of his nearly decade-long commitment to the fight for justice for Teina Pora, a young Māori man wrongly imprisoned for 21 years. In Dark Places, Michael’s non-fiction novel about Teina, won Best Non-Fiction at the Ngaio Marsh Awards. Michael made a documentary which lead to the discovery of evidence pivotal to Teina’s exoneration. He also directed and co-wrote a dramatic feature film about Teina adapted from his own book, which was nominated for a record 11 awards at the NZTV Awards, winning Best Director and Best Film. Professor Andrew Geddis from Pundit.co.nz describes In Dark Places as:

‘[b]eautiful, compellingly told. Bennett’s genius is to build the story around the characters… (and) liberally apply the tropes of crime thriller writing. The reader is carried along by what stylistically seems to be a well-plotted and written thriller, only to be jerked back to the realisation that all of this actually happened. His book is about a real life (and a real death) and I challenge anyone to get through without tearing up. A sad and awful book told in a remarkably good way.’

Michael is the author of a time travel graphic novel, Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas (2018), co-written with Ant Sang.

Outside of writing books, Michael is co-curator Māori (with Matariki Bennett) of Waituhi o Tāmaki, the Auckland Writers’ Festival, from 2023 – 2025. He is the 2020 recipient of the Te Aupounamu Māori Screen Excellence Award, awarded by the NZ Film Commission for excellence in Māori filmmaking. As a filmmaker, Michael’s short films and feature films have screened and won awards internationally, including Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Locarno, New York and London. He has won many awards for his work as a writer, director and producer in television, including the acclaimed crime thriller series The Gone which won Best TV Drama Series (2023).

Accustomed to public speaking, Micheal has served as chair, co-curator and guest speaker at a number of national festivals, as well as panelist over multiple festivals nationally and internationally including the UK, USA, and Australia. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, he runs workshops and supports Māori and Pasifika writers through Ngā Aho Whakaari, Script To Screen and the NZ Film Commission, he was Head of Screenwriting at South Seas Film School for six years, he has delivered screenwriting workshops for Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters, and he voluntarily mentors numerous emerging Māori and Pasifika writers.

Michael lives in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. He is currently working on a crime thriller time travel story and a nonfiction book.

 

Links

Simon & Schuster author page

Penguin NZ author page

NZ Booklovers review of Carved In Blood (May, 2025)

Kete Books review of Carved In Blood (May, 2025)

The Post interview: Michael Bennett on “raising next generation of artists and storytellers” (April, 2025)

NZ Listener review of Better the Blood: “Michael Bennett returns his Māori detective to her roots in highly anticipated sequel” (April, 2024)

Kete Books review of Return To Blood (April, 2024)

Kirkus Reviews review of Better the Blood: “A striking debut and a significant addition to Indigenous literature” (Jan, 2023)

Radio NZ interview: “Scriptwriter turned best-selling thriller writer” (Sept, 2022)

E-Tangata interview on In Dark Places:  “The Power Of Words” (Sept, 2022)

The Spinoff feature by Michael on writing Better The Blood “The stunning new novel that’s a Trojan horse for exploring the hurt of colonisation”(Aug, 2022)

Stuff interview on In Dark places: “What Happened To Teina Devastates Me To This Day” (Aug, 2022)

NZ Herald review of Better the Blood – “a remarkable post-colonial crime novel” (Aug, 2022)

NZ Herald interview on In Dark Places: “It’s a crime: The horrific case of Teina Pora” (July, 2018)

Stuff interview on In Dark Places: “This Should Make You Angry” (July, 2018)

Pundit review of In Dark Places (May, 2016)

 

Best of Lists:

2025:

The Times (London) – Best of Crime List: Carved In Blood

2024:

NZ Listener – Best Books of 2024: Return To Blood

New York Times – Paperbacks of the Week: Better The Blood

2023:

Deadly Pleasures – Best Books of 2023: Better The Blood

NPR (USA) – Best Books of the Year: Better The Blood

Oprah Daily – Best Mystery Books to Read: Better The Blood

Boston Globe – Our Six Favourite Social Thrillers 2023: Better The Blood

2022:

NZ Listener – Best Books: Better The Blood

Ingrid Horrocks is an essayist, travel writer and fiction writer. She was born in Hamilton, grew up on farms around Auckland and the Wairarapa, and has lived in the UK, Germany, and the US, where she completed a PhD in literature at Princeton. Ingrid is the author of numerous books, spanning multiple genres, and her writing has appeared in Lithub, The Ninth Letter, The Sydney Review of Books, Spinoff, Landfall, and the Guardian. Her fiction debut, All Her Lives: Nine Stories, is forthcoming with Te Herenga Waka University Press in 2025, and University of Queensland Press in 2026.

Ingrid’s latest nonfiction book, Where We Swim (VUP and UQP, 2021), published simultaneously in Aotearoa and Australia, is a blend of essay, memoir, travel, and nature writing. Described as an “exquisitely written” (The Australian), “luminous” “work of wondrous depth” (Australian Book Review), it is “several books in one: a travel book, …a family narrative, and … a book about climate change”: “A book of our moment” (Harry Ricketts, RNZ). Ranging from Wellington beaches and rivers, to the Amazon and the Arizona desert, it explores the interconnectedness of lives: mundane and extraordinary, local and global, human and nonhuman. Working to unmake assumptions about both nature and travel writing, the book seeks forms adequate to our contemporary experiences in a time of ecological and political crisis. It is also a book about mid-life and family.

Ingrid’s other writing includes a poetry book and the genre-bending Travelling with Augusta: 1835 and 1999 (VUP 2003). She has also written a book on the history of women wanderers, Women Wanderers and the Writing of Mobility (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and co-edited a collection with Cherie Lacey, Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand (VUP, 2016).

Ingrid is an Honorary Research Fellow at Massey University, where she was formerly a Professor of Creative Writing. With Tina Makereti, she co-chaired the steering committee for the international festival for nonfiction writing, NonfictioNOW2021. In 2024, she was the Kaituhi Tarāwhare, Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters. She was awarded a Michael King Established Writer Residency (2021), a Massey University Excellence Fund Major Grant (2019), NZ Vice-Chancellor’s Committee, William Georgetti Award (1999) and in 1996 both the Victoria University Prize for Original Composition ENGL 252 and University of Canterbury Macmillan Brown Prize for Writers.

Ingrid’s new work, All Her Lives (Te Herenga Waka Press, 2025) is a short story collection that follows women across generations as they resist, nurture and transform. These are lives shaped by love and politics, motherhood and memory, constraint and defiance. All Her Lives is currently shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

Ingrid lives in Te Whanganui a Tara, Wellington, with her partner and twin daughters.

 

Links

Ingrid’s website

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Te Herenga Waka University Press writer page

ANZRB review of All Her Lives (Nov, 2025)

IIML and CNZ Writer-in-residence announcement (Nov, 2023)

Lithub essay ‘Dissolving Genre: Toward Finding New Ways to Write About the World’ subsequently published in Bloomsbury collection, Bending Genre (Jan, 2022)

Guardian essay ‘In a New Zealand estuary, I closed my eyes and floated. It turned out the water was toxic’ (July, 2021)

Spinoff essay ‘The climate crisis is seeping into books and making them really, really weird’ (March, 2021)

 

 

 

 

Mikaela Nyman writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Swedish. Born in the autonomous, demilitarised Åland Islands in Finland, she lived in Vanuatu and is a keen collaborator with Pacific Island writers. Mikaela’s climate fiction novel Sado (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2020) was set in Vanuatu in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Pam. In Landfall Review, Zahid Gamieldien compared Sado to J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, and concluded: “In many ways, it [Sado] is a subtler work of fiction that is kinder to its characters – and it ends up operating as an intricate love letter to Vanuatu.”

She holds a PhD in Creative Writing inter-disciplinary with Pacific Studies from the IIML at Te Herenga Waka University. In 2021, she co-edited the ground-breaking Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (THWUP, 2021) with Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen. In her review, Selina Tusitala Marsh said: “I commend and congratulate the editors Mikaela Nyman, Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen and the regional editors mentioned in the introduction for their tenacity (through a category 5 cyclone and COVID-19) and their vision to bringing this book alive. Their role as editors, rather than as literary gatekeepers, are more akin to that of midwives, complete with long hours and no pay, who have helped bring new life and new stories into the light of publication. Sista Stanap Strong! is an anthology full of astute, emotional honest personal declarations and explorations of independence.”

In 2023, Mikaela was invited as an ally and supporter of Melanesian literature to facilitate creative writing workshops at the 7th Melanesian Arts & Culture Festival and the first Haus Storian literary festival in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Her long-standing collaboration with writers in Vanuatu to boost literature and literacy, locally and regionally, is ongoing.

Both of Mikaela’s poetry collections in Swedish have been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, in 2020 and 2024 respectively. Her second poetry collection To get out of a riptide, you must move sideways (Ellips, 2023) was awarded a major prize by the Swedish Literary Society in Finland (SLS) in 2024. Swedish reviewer Therese Eriksson wrote: “The landscape, plants and animals – a wonderful mix of Nordic and New Zealand – are not only Nyman’s tools for describing the violent changes our planet is facing, but equally her way of writing about people and relationships. Here Nyman’s poetry reminds of the American poet Elizabeth Bishop’s way of choosing the path via the non-human in her poems in order to write precisely about humanity.” (Svenska Dagbladet 11 July 2024). In 2022, Ellips published Mikaela’s literary essay and translation of some of Helen Heath’s poems from Are Friends Electric? in Swedish. She has written essays about several New Zealand and Pacific writers for Nordic literary journal Horisont and World Literature Today.

In 2021, she held the Massey University Visiting Artist Residency in Palmerston North. In 2024, Mikaela was the Robert Burns Fellow at Otago University and invited to deliver a creative response to Janet Frame at the Symposium for the Janet Frame Centenary. She lives in Taranaki and produces the Sugar Loafing Arts Cast, a community arts radio show and podcast that challenges the belief that the arts are exclusive.

In 2025 Mikaela published her first English language poetry collection The Anatomy of Sand (Te Herenga Waka University Press). She will also release Scotopia (Ōtākou Press and Hocken) which is a limited edition, hand-printed short sequence of poems from her Robert Burns Fellowship.

 

Links

Victoria University Press (now Te Herenga Waka University Press) author page 

Read NZ writer file

ANZRB review of The Anatomy of Sand (Sept, 2025)

Regional News review of Anatomy of Sand (May, 2025)

University of Otago announces Mikaela as Robert Burns Fellow 2024 (Sept, 2023)

Project MUSE review by Margaret Jolly of Sista, Stanap Strong!: A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (Vol 34 No 1, 2022)

NZ Herald article announcing Mikaela’s Massey University residency (March, 2021)

Kete Books review by Selina Tusitala Marsh of Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (2021)

The Spinoff review by Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen of Sado (Sept, 2020)

Poetry Shelf essay by Paula Green discussing Sado and Mikaela’s choice to write about a place and culture other than hers (August, 2020)

Radio NZ review on Nine to Noon of Sado (April, 2020)

Landfall review by Zahid Gamieldien on Sado (July, 2020)

 

 

 

Caroline Barron is an award-winning author, story coach, presenter, and manuscript assessor. With a Masters in Creative Writing and a journalism degree, and a past life owning a modelling agency, she is in demand for her dynamic workshops on storytelling, creativity and writing. She is a Creative New Zealand funding assessor, worked for Auckland Writers Festival as their development manager, and has worked extensively with New Zealand Society of Authors. Jill Nicholl’s in the New Zealand Herald wrote, ‘Caroline Barron is a woman whose prose is up there with this country’s finest female authors.’ Sam Brooks from The Spinoff praised Caroline as a ‘great storyteller’ with a ‘gift for visceral images’.

Caroline’s work has been published in Condé Nast Traveller, North & South, Awa Wahine, Landfall, New Zealand Herald and more. Her memoir, Ripiro Beach (Bateman Books, New Zealand), won the 2020 New Zealand Heritage Literary Award. Dame Fiona Kidman wrote that Ripiro Beach is ‘one powerful read….confronting…a very brave book.’  In 2021 she was awarded a Creative New Zealand Arts Grant to write her debut novel, Golden Days (Affirm Press, Australia, 2023), which was then was touted in the NZ Listener as one to watch for book-to-film. The Sydney Morning Herald praised Golden Days for its mix of ‘sharp dialogue with delicate and deceptive reflection, the decadent 90s zeitgeist haunted by how recollections of youth (and its friendships) can change, sometimes drastically, over time.’

Caroline was a Michael King Writers Centre writer in residence (2023), shortlisted for the Surrey Hotel / Newsroom residency (2020), and recipient of the New Zealand Society of Authors CompleteMS Programme (2018). She was winner of the 2018 NZ Heritage Writing Awards (short prose section) and in the same year, shortlisted for the NZ Heritage Writing Award. She was highly commended for the 2017 NZ Heritage Writing Competition (for short prose). In 2016 she received second place in the Travcom Best New Travel Writer Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards for her story ‘Ocean Bay’. Her story ‘Sam’s Nana’ was the Auckland regional winner and highly commended for National Flash Fiction Day 2020 and her story ‘Pain’s Back’ was highly commended for the Webb-Pullman Poetry Award 2024. In 2015, Caroline was the recipient of the NZSA Lilian Ida Smith Award.

Caroline is an engaging presenter who has written and taught dozens of workshops (online and in person) on many aspects of writing and storytelling. Topics include writing memoir, being a literary citizen, writing 3D characters, book marketing, storytelling as a pathway to excellence, creativity and leadership and effective writing for business. She has appeared as author, MC, chair and presenter at numerous festivals and events including Auckland Writers Festival, WOMAD, Crimes on the Coast, Hamilton Book Month, NZSA Manawatū Roadshow, Nelson Arts Festival, Queenstown Writers Festival and in Australia, Affirm Press Roadshows in Sydney and Melbourne.

Currently, Caroline is working on a ‘biblio-memoir’ which is a documented year of a booklist of re-readings and also a portrait of life, including long-term chronic back pain and surgery, building on the success of her award-winning memoir, Ripiro Beach.

Caroline resides between Auckland and Northland’s Ripiro Beach, with her husband and two young daughters.

 

Links 

Caroline Barron’s website

NZ Society of Authors writer page

High Spot Literary author page 

Affirm Press writer page

Bateman Books writer page www.batemanbooks.co.nz

Caroline’s documented year of re-reading on Instagram 

The Spinoff review of Golden Days (April, 2023)

 

 

 

 

Gigi Fenster is the author of two novels, both of which were finalists in the New Zealand Book Awards: The Intentions Book (2012), which was longlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award, and A Good Winter (2021), which won the Michael Gifkins Prize. She is also the author of Feverish (2018), a work of creative nonfiction. Her work has been published in various literary journals in New Zealand and abroad including Headland, Turbine, Sport, Hue & Cry and the International Literary Quarterly. Gigi has received the Todd Writers’ Bursary, a Michael King Residency and a CLNZ/NZSA Research Grant.

Gigi was a founder member of the Write Where You Are Trust, which provides creative writing teaching to people in prisons. She is currently a board member of the Trust and Chair of the Wellington Branch of Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa, The New Zealand Society of Authors.

A popular speaker, reader, MC, chair and interviewer, Gigi has attended – as recently as 2024 but often over multiple years – various festivals and events nationally such as: the Auckland Writers Festival, the Limmud Festival in both Auckland and Wellington, LitCrawl in Wellington, NZ reader and Writers Festival Wellington, Auckland Ladies’ Litera-tea, Watermark, Ōtaki, and Crime After Crime and Off the Page, Palmerston North. Gigi had also spoken at conferences such as Nonfiction Now, and the LIANZA Conference. Her international presence includes the Jewish Literary Festival, South Africa, and both the Sydney and Melbourne Jewish Writers Festivals, Australia.

Gigi has a PhD in Creative Writing and various law degrees and is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University.  She was recently awarded a 2024 Mātātuhi Foundation grant for an anthology of close readings of New Zealand short stories (co-edited with Paula Morris) to be accompanied by teaching notes and a podcast. Gigi has recently also completed a young adult novel for publication.

 

Links

Te Herenga Waka University Press writer page

Text Publishing writer page

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer file

ANZL review of A Good Winter (April, 2022)

Radio New Zealand interview discussing Feverish (March, 2018)

Kiri Piahana-Wong is a poet, editor, and the publisher at Anahera Press. She is of Māori (Ngāti Ranginui), Chinese and Pākehā (English) ancestry. Kiri is the author of two poetry collections: Night Swimming (2013) and Tidelines (2024), both with Anahera Press. Night Swimming was a finalist in the Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Awards 2014. Reviewer Siobhan Harvey described Night Swimming as ‘a collection abundant with striking imagery and imagination. It marks a promising debut by an author carving out her own distinctive themes and ideas.’ Of Tidelines, Paula Green (NZ Poetry Shelf) wrote ‘this is a precious poetry collection, both moving and lyrical, that lets you feel the sting of salt and despair, fragility and resolve.’

Kiri’s poetry is concerned with the way physical landscapes interact with our internal landscapes. She writes about Te Taiao the natural world, relationships and what lies at the boundaries of our physical and emotional selves. Reviewing Tidelines, Tracey Sharp wrote: ‘[T]he landscape presses on Piahana-Wong’s poetry in a way that lends her precise, sparse language a deep gravity. And it’s this deft interweaving of the outer of nature and the inner of despair, that is the touchstone of this powerful work.’

Her poems have been frequently anthologised and published in journals, including Essential NZ Poems, Poetry NZ, Landfall, Takahē, Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems, A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, Vā: Stories by Women of the Moana, and internationally in Set Me On Fire: A Poem For Every Feeling (Doubleday, UK).

Kiri is the co-editor of two anthologies: Te Awa o Kupu (Penguin NZ, 2023), a compilation of contemporary Māori literature, and Short / Poto: the big book of small stories (Massey University Press, 2025), a bilingual (te reo Māori/English) book of microfictions.

Kiri established Anahera Press in 2011 to provide a new publication platform for Māori and Pasifika poets, who at that time were marginalised by the mainstream. As of 2024, the press has published 12 poetry collections and 1 novel. Anahera Press has recently refocused its efforts within Te Ao Māori, concentrating on publishing toikupu poetry by kaituhi Māori.

Kiri was an MC at Poetry Live, Aotearoa’s longest-running live poetry venue, for six years. She is passionate about encouraging other poets and opening pathways for emerging writers to succeed. As well as running Anahera Press, she is a mentor with the New Zealand Society of Authors mentoring programme. She has performed her poetry at events such as the Auckland Writers Festival, Going West and the Medellin International Poetry Festival.

 

Links

Anahera Press website

Anahera Press writer page

Penguin NZ writer page

ANZRB review of Short/Poto (August, 2025)

Interview with Headlands journal discussing Tidelines (July, 2024)

Interview with Māori Literature Trust discussing Tidelines, writing and advice for Māori writers (June, 2024)

Interview with e-tangata discussing the revolution in the poetry world — especially among Māori (May, 2024)

 

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Megan Dunn is the author of three irreverent works of non-fiction: Tinderbox (Galley Beggar Press, 2017), her memoir in essays Things I Learned at Art School (Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2021) and The Mermaid Chronicles: A Midlife Mer-moir (Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2024). In his review of Things I Learned at Art School, James Cook describes Megan as ‘Dorothy Parker in Courtney Love army boots; Eve Babitz with an Auckland accent…’ In his review of The Mermaid Chronicles, Guy Somerset writes of Megan: ‘I would read her on anything and follow her writing anywhere.’

Megan is a curator and art critic in New Zealand. She has published columns, reviews, personal essays and features for a wide range of media including the Guardian Australia, The New Zealand Listener, Metro, Newsroom and Art News New Zealand. She was once the visual arts correspondent on Radio New Zealand’s Saturday morning show, with broadcaster Kim Hill.

Megan graduated with a master’s in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. In 2006, she won an Escalator award from the New Writing Partnership (now the National Centre for Writing.) She was the 2018 winner of the Surrey Hotel Writers Residency. In 2022 she was the annual Writer in Residence at the International Institute of Modern Letters, based at Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka. During this residency she worked on the first draft of her mer-moir and also curated an art exhibition The Mermaid Chronicles, based on her journeys to meet the world’s leading professional mermaids.

The Mermaid Chronicles was longlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Megan currently lives and works in Wellington.

 

Links

Megan Dunn’s website

Penguin Random House writer page

Galley Beggar Press author page

ANZRB review by Guy Somerset of The Mermaid Chronicles (Sept, 2024)

Radio NZ interview with Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon discussing The Mermaid Chronicles (Aug, 2024)

North & South magazine interview with Theo Macdonald discussing The Mermaid Chronicles (Aug, 2024)

Watch TVNZ Seven Sharp interview discussing Megan’s exhibition and mermaids (Dec, 2022)

Metro magazine feature article by Dr Lana Lopesi on Things I Learned at Art School (Sept, 2021)

Sydney Review of Books review by David McCooey of Things I Learned at Art School (March, 2022)

Review 31 (UK) review by James Cook of Things I Learned at Art School (2021)

Kirsty Gunn is a New Zealand born fiction writer living in London and Scotland whose work has won numerous awards and been made into films, broadcast, theatre, dance and widely broadcast. Published in multiple countries internationally, her novels and short stories focus on ordinary lives and relationships and seek to show within the day-to-day those shocking moments of intimacy and tiny drama that make up human experience. ‘I am fully in love with Kirsty Gunn’s stories,’ Jane Campion writes. ‘They hit the heart of life so truly it makes me quiver.’

Kirsty is the author of six novels – Rain, The Keepsake, Featherstone, The Boy and the Sea, The Big Music and Caroline’s Bikini – extended essays and short stories about identity and Katherine Mansfield – Thorndon, My Katherine Mansfield Project and Going Bush – as well as three collections of short stories – Pretty Ugly, This Place you Return to is Home and Infidelities – and 44 Things, a collection of essays, fragments and stories. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including The Junky’s Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories (1994) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood (1997).

Kirsty’s work has been shortlisted for and won many prizes. Her acclaimed story Rain (1994), about an adolescent girl and the break-up of her family, won a London Arts Board Literature Award, and also led to the 2001 film of the same name, directed by Christine Jeffs and the 2001 ballet by the Rosas Company, set to “Music for Eighteen Musicians”, a 1976 score by Steve Reich. Her collection of short stories, This Place You Return To Is Home (1999), won a Scottish Arts Council Writer’s Bursary (2001). The boy and the sea was the 2007 Sundial Scottish Book of the Year and her previous work Featherstone was listed as a New York Times Notable Book and received a Scottish Arts Council Bursary for Literature. Her book, The Big Music, which comprises artwork, music and a film featuring the well-known Scottish actor Brian Cox, was listed for the James Tait Black and IMPAC awards and won The New Zealand Post Book of the Year (2013).  Her collection of short stories, Infidelities (2014), was awarded the 2015 Edge Hill Short Story Prize and was also shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Kirsty was educated at Victoria University and Oxford. She has a Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Dundee where she established and directs the programme of Writing Practice and Study and directs, with Gail Low, the WritersRead series at Tonic in Dundee. She is also an essayist and publisher of essays; and directs the research centre Imagined Spaces, set up to encourage new work and thinking around the essay form. Her reviews and nonfiction appear in a range of journals and newspapers, including the LRB, PN Review and the Guardian, and her long form essay, My Katherine Mansfield Project, was published by Notting Hill Editions and elsewhere.

In her most recent work Pretty Ugly (Otago University Press, 2024) Kirsty Gunn reminds us that ambiguity and complication are elemental forces in a human life, and grist to the storyteller’s mill. These 13 darkly compelling stories, set in New Zealand and in the UK, are testament to her unrivalled ability to look directly into the troubled human heart and draw out what dwells there. The ‘ugly’ of these stories, she writes, is to do with ‘considering how much a person’s life can bear’. Pretty Ugly was shortlisted for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

 

Links:

Kirsty Gunn’s website

Faber & Faber author page

Otago University Press writer page

British Council writer page

ANZRB review of Pretty Ugly (Nov, 2024)

Radio NZ interview with Kirsty Gunn discussing Caroline’s Bikini (July, 2018)

Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor, manuscript assessor and creative writing teacher originally from the Chesapeake Bay area on the US east coast, now residing in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her poetry, fiction, essays and creative nonfiction have been published and placed in competitions in Aotearoa and internationally. She edits at At the Bay | I te Kokoru, a literary organisation dedicated to New Zealand’s storytelling traditions and innovative new voices. She is founding editor of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and National Flash Fiction Day NZ, and Managing Editor for the acclaimed international Best Small Fictions series. She was previously review editor at Landfall and takahē. A Pushcart nominee, a Watson Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, a three-time finalist in the Glass Woman international writing competition, Michelle is also the recipient of a New Zealand Society of Authors/Auckland Museum Library grant and a New Zealand Society of Authors mentorship grant. In 2016, she was also short-listed for the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship for her novel draft, and her story ‘Lost and Found in Berlin’ placed second in the Nivalis Short Story Competition.

Michelle has been involved in numerous festivals as either guest, chair, curator or editor, most recently: Centre for the Book, Dunedin, Katherine Mansfield House open day, NZSA Road Show, Word Christchurch (2024), Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival (2023 & 2021), Phantom Billstickers national campaign (2023 & 2022), Going West Literary Festival (2021) , Bath Flash Fiction (2021), National Poetry Day Dunedin (2021 -2024) and was invited to speak at the Auckland Writers’ Festival (May 2020). She has held various writing workshops and been much involved in Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature projects.

She has judged and presented for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and Fish Flash Fiction International Prize (2024) and the Michael Gifkins Prize for an unpublished Novel (2023 & 2024). Michelle has also been a mentor for the NZ Society of Authors programme (adult and youth) since 2019 and been guest judge in past years for: Dunedin Writers’ Workshop, South Island Writers’ Association, the International Writers’ Workshop, the Whangārei Poetry Walk, NorthWrite’s collaboration competition, NYC Challenge, Reflex Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash 500, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Bath Novella-in-Flash Award, and the At the Bay Sparkling Prose Competition. She has tutored for the School for Young Writers, Christchurch, the LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore (since 2022) and was on the selection panel for the Lilian Ida Smith Award 2021.

Her first book the everrumble, is a poetic imagining of intense focus and sweeping ideas described by Catherine McNamara as ‘an infused and accomplished accumulation of being, a loving homage to our beleaguered planet’ and ‘a tour de force’ by Christopher Allen. Longlisted in The Guardian‘s Not-The-Booker Prize and featured in Verb Festival (Wellington)’s digital programme, the everrumble is described by Tracey Slaughter as ‘luminous… taking our senses on a journey of ‘orchestral movement’.

Michelle’s second work, the other side of better, is a hybrid collection of small fictions that criss-crosses the line between truth and fiction, prose and poetry, past and future.  Paula Morris describes the book as ‘[w]ell-turned stories, rich with wit and detail, that explore the spaces between people and places’ whereas Erik Kennedy states this is ‘a collection that surprises not just because it can, but because it understands the surprises of the world.’

Her anthology work is extensive and includes A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha, edited with Witi Ihimaera (Massey University Press 2023), and Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand, edited with Paula Morris and James Norcliffe (Otago University Press 2020). Her most recent anthology is Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages, edited with Vaughan Rapatahana (The Cuba Press 2025). This sparkling new collection brings more than 40 languages together, story by story, highlighting the beautifully complex realities of Aotearoa’s multicultural and multilingual society.

Following her recent Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages, Michelle also released Short/Poto (Massey University Press, 2025), one hundred short, short stories in English and te reo Māori, edited with Kiri Piahana-Wong.

‘Michelle Elvy needs no more than this, the smallest white spaces in which to swim the waters between story and poem with humour, colour, imagination and a sharp grace’ (Tania Hershman).

 

Links

Author website

NZSA author page

Massey University Press writer page

At the Bay | I te Kokoru books: https://atthebay.org/books/

Flash Frontier website

National Flash Fiction Day website

ANZRB review of Short/Poto (August, 2025)

Rachel Dore interview ‘Words from the bubble’ (March, 2024)

Guest interview at Irish journal SPLONK (April, 2023)

Interview on judging the Bath Novella-in-flash award (June, 2022)

Bath Flash Fiction Award interview discussing the other side of better (August, 2021)

Radio NZ interview discussing the other side of better (June, 2021)

Radio NZ interview discussing anthology Ko Aotearoa Tatou, We are New Zealand, born out of mosque attacks looks at what it means to be Kiwi (December, 2020)

Radio NZ interview on National Flash Fiction Day 10-year anniversary (June, 2020)

Nancy Stohlman interview discussing the everrumble (January, 2020)