Academy of New Zealand Literature

Novelist Paul Ewen was born in Blenheim, New Zealand, and spent his formative years in Canterbury, primarily in Ashburton. His first book, London Pub Reviews (Shoes With Rockets, 2007), was called ‘a cross between Blade Runner and Coronation Street’ (Waterstones). His first novel, Francis Plug: How To Be A Public Author (Galley Beggar Press, 2014) was a Book of the Year in the NZ Listener, the Irish Times, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Big Issue and has been published in the UK, Australia, Germany and Serbia. The Sunday Times described it as: ‘Inspired. A brilliant, deranged new comic creation’, and the New Statesman called it ‘a modern comic masterpiece.’

This was followed up in 2018 with Francis Plug: Writer in Residence (Galley Beggar Press), which the Spectator called “…the saviour of comic fiction.” Writing in the Guardian, author Nina Stibbe wrote: “Like its predecessor, this book is pure delight…hilarious and absurd but always compassionate.” And British comedian Stewart Lee called Francis Plug “the only writer that matters”.

After graduating from the University of Canterbury, Paul spent six years in south-east Asia, including four years working in Vietnam, before moving to the UK in 2002. His writing has featured in the NZ Listener, Sport, Dazed & Confused, Five Dials, the Times Higher Education Supplement, and the Guardian. He has been a contributor to anthologies in the UK and New Zealand such as New Writing 13 (Picador, 2005), and Tell You What: Great New Zealand Nonfiction (Auckland UP, 2015). Paul was runner-up in the UK Society of Authors McKitterick Prize in 2015, and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize in the same year. He has participated in various international festivals as speaker and chair, and until recently was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Greenwich, London.

Paul’s book Francis Plug: Writer in Residence was shortlisted for the 2019 Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.

Links

Twitter:@GalleyBeggars 

New Zealand issue of Five Dials

The Spectator review of Francis Plug: Writer In Residence (2018)

Guardian review of Francis Plug: Writer in Residence (2018)

New Statesman review of Francis Plug (2014)

Guardian review of Francis Plug (2014)

The Sunday Times review of Francis Plug (2014)

New Zealand born Bridget van der Zijpp is a fiction writer and author of three contemporary novels. After completing an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Bridget published her first novel, Misconduct (Victoria UP, 2008), a story about a rejected woman who finds solace in acts of criminality. Elizabeth McCaffin described the novel in New Zealand Books as having ‘an alert and amused attention to human foible and idiosyncrasy’. Misconduct was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Prize, South East Asia and the Pacific Region. In addition, Misconduct was shortlisted for the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards Best First Book of Fiction, and was also included in the NZ Listener Best Books of 2008.

An Arts Grant from Creative New Zealand allowed Bridget to complete her second novel, In the Neighbourhood of Fame (Victoria UP, 2015). This explores social media and its effect on notions of fame. It was described by the Sunday Star Times as ‘an adult, thought-provoking and gripping story on a real social issue’. The NZ Listener noted its ‘considerable merits’ as a ‘subtle, humane and neatly plotted bundle of lives colliding in private and public’.

Bridget has worked as publicist and marketer of music festivals and touring artists. She has been a participant in the Auckland Writers Festival in 2009 and 2015, and the Ruapehu Festival in 2016. In 2022 she was appointed as the Associate Director for the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.

Set in 2019 as it turns into 2020, Bridget’s latest work I Laugh Me Broken (Victoria UP, 2021) is a novel about an inescapable past and the complex play between genetic inheritance and the choices that are ours to make. It is, finally, a hard-won love story.

Links

Victoria University Press author page

Twitter:@bavdz

takehē review of In the Neighbourhood of Fame (April, 2016)

Metro Magazine review of In the Neighbourhood of Fame (May, 2015)

Sunday Star Times review of In the Neighbourhood of Fame (May, 2015)

Interview in Canvas Magazine, New Zealand Herald (April, 2015)

NZ Listener review of In the Neighbourhood of Fame  (April, 2015)

Otago Daily Times review of In the Neighbourhood of Fame (April, 2015)

Radio NZ National review of In the Neighbourhood of Fame (April, 2015)

Booksellers review of In the Neighbourhood of Fame (April, 2015)

Author discusses Standing Room Only, on Radio New Zealand National (April, 2015)

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One of the most popular writers in New Zealand, Steve Braunias is also an in-demand public speaker. He has long practised the art of creative non-fiction and brings a quick wit from page to stage, where he is confident as either a panellist, chair, or featured speaker.

As a journalist and author, Steve has won over 40 national writing awards including best columnist, arts writer (three times), travel writer (three times), sports writer (twice), crime writer, and food writer. His other awards include Best First Book of Non-fiction (2002), Best Book of Non-fiction (2013), and most recently the Australasian College of Anaesthesia Media Award (2016).

He has also won fellowships to both Oxford and Cambridge Universities and was a recipient of the Buddle Finlay Frank Sargeson Fellowship. He has often appeared at literary festivals throughout New Zealand, as well as London and Melbourne.

His book The Scene of the Crime (HarperCollins, 2015) was described as ‘probably the best book of crime writing yet published in New Zealand’. His previous books include a savage political campaign diary Madmen: Inside the Weirdest Election Campaign Ever (Luncheon Sausage Books, 2014), and an often harrowing examination of small-town New Zealand life Civilisation: 20 Places on the Edge of the World (Awa Press, 2012). In 2016, his work included a long Q + A with London writer Andrew O’Hagan, a quest to eat at every single one of the 55 fast food joints on one street in Auckland, and a satirical diary of Prime Minister John Key which featured Key unscrewing his head and letting it float up and around the ceiling.

In 2021 Steve released two new books. Missing Persons (HarperCollins, 2021) is a collection of twelve extraordinary tales of disappearance, stories about how some New Zealanders go missing — the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cover Story: 100 beautiful, strange, and frankly incredible NZ LP covers (Oratia Media) is based on interviews and Steve’s own experience collecting over 800 albums from op-shops around the country. He reflects on the artistic flair, fashion and occasional gaudiness these album covers represent, and what they say about our popular culture.

In his book The Survivors  (HarperCollins, 2024) Steve Braunias retells twelve mysteries of human nature – unusual stories of how people choose to survive their own lives, and their decisions, desires, impulses… and failings.

His most recent work, Polkinghorne: Inside the Trial of the Century (Allen & Unwin, 2025), takes readers on an extraordinary and often chilling journey through the most high-profile murder case in modern New Zealand history. With unparalleled access to the key players, Steve offers readers his unique insight into the investigation, the trial and the astonishing revelations that kept the New Zealand public utterly transfixed. Polkinghorne was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand General Non-Fiction Award.

Steve is a staff writer for the NZ Herald and also serves as literary editor for the New Zealand current affairs website Newsroom.

Links:

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Wikipedia

HarperCollins author page

Awa Press author page

Steve Braunias on Twitter

ANZRB review of Polkinghorne: Inside the Trial of the Century (July, 2025)

ANZRB review of The Survivors (September, 2024)

Vanda Symon is the best-selling author of six Detective Sam Shephard crime fiction novels, Overkill (Penguin, 2007), The Ringmaster (Penguin, 2008), Containment (Penguin, 2009), Bound (Penguin, 2011), Expectant (Orenda, 2023), Prey (Orenda, 2024) and the stand alone psychological thriller, Faceless (Penguin, 2012). She is a three-time finalist for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Fiction Novel. Her books have also been published in Germany.

Author Kate Mosse has said: ‘Vanda Symon’s fast paced crime novels are as good as anything the US has to offer – a sassy heroine, fabulous sense of place, and rip roaring stories with a twist. Perfect curl-up on the sofa reading.’ Crimewatch has described Vanda as ‘part of a new wave of Kiwi crime writers… Symon’s talent for creating well-rounded characters permeates throughout’.

Vanda is the producer and host of Write On, a monthly radio show on matters literary on Otago Access Radio, and she also reviews books for National Radio. She is very involved in the New Zealand writing community, having been chair of the Otago Southland branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors, and is currently the Chair of Copyright Licensing New Zealand. Vanda also has participated in celebrity debates, acted as speaker, reader or chair in literary events and festivals in New Zealand and Australia, and toured with The New Zealand Book Council’s Words on Wheels.

Vanda has a professional background as a pharmacist and in 2018 completed a PhD in science communication, examining the communication of science through crime fiction.

In her latest book, Reaper (Orenda, 2026), homeless on Auckland’s streets, Max Grimes fights to survive when someone starts killing the city’s forgotten. Pulled into a dark past, he must stop the killer – or be next. This is the gripping second instalment in a breathtaking series, from New Zealand’s queen of crime.

Links

Vanda Symon’s website

Vanda on Facebook

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

New Zealand Society of Authors writer page

Penguin Books author page

Wikipedia

Born in Central Otago in 1945, Bernadette Hall describes herself as a ‘peace baby’. Although she did not become an author until in her 40s, Bernadette has since published eleven poetry collections and edited several. Her work has been widely anthologised nationally and internationally, including eight times in Best New Zealand Poems. Most recently  ‘The Perfumes of Arabia’ (Catalyst, 2016) was selected by Jenny Bornholt as one of the Best New Zealand Poems of 2016. Amongst her extensive accolades, The Press honoured Bernadette for her lasting contribution to literature in the South Island (2003), and she was the recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (2015). Influenced by her Irish parents, the resonances of divided loyalty are a continuing theme in her writing. Ron Riddell (NZ Listener) described her voice as ‘quintessentially a South Island one: rooted in river, plain and mountain, with an open, wide-ranging world view that is both compassionate and empathetic’. In 2017, Bernadette was admitted to The New Zealand Order of Merit for Services to Literature.

Bernadette has attended numerous festivals and been Writer-in-Residence at Victoria University (2006), and at Rathcoola in County Cork, Ireland (2007). In 2011, she taught at the Institute of Modern Letters at Post-Graduate level. In 2008, Bernadette co-founded The Hagley Writers’ Institute. It continues to flourish under Director, Morrin Rout, and Bernadette is now its Patron.

An Artists in Antarctica Award (2004), shared with friend and collaborator Dunedin artist, Kathryn Madill, resulted in Bernadette’s seventh poetry collection The Ponies (VUP, 2007).  An extract from this is to be displayed near Scott’s statue on a Literary Trail, part of Te Papa Otakao / the Avon River Precinct.  One poem was dramatised for TV One’s Artsville programme. Chris Archer, a Christchurch composer, turned another into a choral work.

Maukatere: Floating Mountain (Seraph Press, 2016) is a limited edition of 170 signed copies, hand-stitched and with original drawings by the Wellington artist, Rachel O’Neill.

Bernadette describes her most recent collection Fancy Dancing (Victoria UP, 2020) as being ‘as close as I’ll ever get to writing an autobiography’.

Bernadette in Antarctica on her 59th birthday. Photo credit: David Trubridge.

Links

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Victoria University Press author page

Wikipedia

ANZL review of Fancy Dancing (Dec, 2020)

NZ Poet Laureate blog: poems from Fancy Dancing (July, 2020)

Seraph Press interview with Bernadette Hall (June, 2016)

NZ Poetry Shelf review of Maukatere, floating mountain (June, 2016)

Bernadette’s Tapa Notebook online

Best NZ Poems online

Poet, performer and artist Cilla McQueen has published multiple poetry collections during her impressive career. She has been the New Zealand Poet Laureate (2009–2011), was presented the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry (2010) and awarded an MNZM for services as a poet in the 2020 Queens Birthday Honours. Three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, her extensive list of accolades includes the PEN/Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry (1983), John Cowie Reid Memorial Prize for Poetry (1982), and Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Scholarship in Letters (1992). Her poetry, often laced with humour, explores such diverse themes as displacement, love, loss, colonisation and ideas of home, modern science and politics. Michael Harlow has described Cilla as ‘one of New Zealand’s most distinguished poets’. Regarding poetry and the readers of it, Cilla believes ‘awakening an interest in poetry means traversing that delicate ground between inner and outer self.’

Cilla graduated from the University of Otago with a Masters (first-class Hons) in 1971. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Literature, Otago University (2008). Amongst many residencies and fellowships, she has twice been the recipient of the Robert Burns Fellowship, Otago University (1985 and 1986) – the first female since Hulme in 1977 – awarded the Goethe Institut Scholarship, Berlin (1988), Tasmania Writer’s Residency, Hobart (1988), the Southland Art Foundation Artist in Residence (1999), Fulbright Visiting Writer’s Fellowship (1985), and was part of the inaugural Australia-New Zealand Writers’ Exchange Fellowship (1987). Her participation in festivals has been extensive, both nationally and internationally.

Her memoir collection, In a Slant Light – a Poet’s Memoir, was published by Otago University Press (2016). ‘The joy of writing a memoir,’ Cilla says, ‘is the wonderful sense of discovering the past as you go. Writing itself becomes an act of memory.’

Cilla’s latest collection Poeta: Selected and New Poems (Otago University Press, 2018) gathers together poems from her fourteen previous volumes, punctuated by eleven striking drawings, and also includes a range of new work that shows Cilla’s riddling creativity continuing to evolve.

Cilla lives in Bluff, New Zealand.

Links

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Otago University press author page

Cilla McQueen’s Poet Laureate page

NZ Electronic Poetry Centre author page and bibliography

Wikipedia

NZ Poetry Shelf review of Poeta: selected and new poems (Dec, 2018)

NZ Poetry Shelf interview (May, 2016)

Radio New Zealand review of In a Slant Light (March, 2016)

Paula Morris (Ngati Wai, Ngati Whatua) was born in Auckland, and has spent much of her adult life in the UK or the US. Her short fiction has been widely anthologised and her first story collection, Forbidden Cities (2008), was a regional finalist for the Commonwealth Prize. In her stories, wrote Kirsty Gunn, Morris ‘slips effortlessly and naturally across time zones and hemispheres, criss-crossing themes of race and culture with a cool, knowing style and claiming an ethnic territory that’s all her own.’

Her eight novels include Queen of Beauty (2002), winner of the Hubert Church First Book Prize at the 2003 Montana NZ Book Awards, a narrative of interwoven stories spanning three generations of a large Maori family. Hibiscus Coast (2005) is an art-world thriller set in Auckland and Shanghai. Lydia Wevers, writing in the Listener, said: ‘Not only is Morris a seriously good writer – the tone doesn’t jar, the characters are satisfyingly complex, and there is an interesting reflection of the way we are now – she can also deliver entertainment … Like Dickens, she can tell a great story but also “catch” the world we live in, with all its complications and ambiguities’.

Rangatira (2011), fiction winner at the 2012 NZ Post Book Awards and Nga Kupu Ora Maori Book Awards, was based on the true story of an 1863 visit to England by a group of Maori, and described as ‘a triumph of characterisation’ (Listener) and an ‘extraordinary literary achievement and probably the best of recent New Zealand historical novels’ (New Zealand Books).

Paula was appointed Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to literature in the 2019 New Years Honours List. This same year she was the recipient of the prestigious Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. She spent the first half of 2019 in France on various projects including journal articles based on her work for the Creative Research Initiative; a play set in France in 1925 drawing on the true story of the writer Jean Rhys working as a ‘ghost’ for Rudolph Valentino’s mother-in-law; and research towards a major non-fiction project, about islands, ports and exiles.

False River (Penguin Random House, 2017) is a diverse collection of fiction and nonfiction pieces that range the world—from America to Antwerp to Aotearoa—and subjects, including Laura Ingalls Wilder, Billy the Kid, Robert Johnson and Hurricane Katrina.

Paula’s nonfiction includes two long-form essays: On Coming Home (Bridget Williams Books, 2015) and Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde (Massey University Press, 2020), a collaboration with photographer Haru Sameshima that was longlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. With Michelle Elvy and James Norcliffe Paula co-edited the acclaimed anthology Ko Aotearoa Tātou (Otago University Press, 2019); with Alison Wong she co-edited A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa NZ (Auckland University Press, 2020), the first-ever anthology of Asian NZ writing. In 2023 Paula edited Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories, a vibrant, essential collection featuring twenty-seven writers working in English or te reo Māori.

Links

Visit Paula’s website

Paula’s blog is ‘Trendy But Casual’

Paula on Twitter

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Wikipedia

Auckland University staff profile

Penguin Books author page

Bridget Williams Books (BWB) author page

ANZRB review of Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories (Aug, 2023)

ANZL review of A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (May, 2021)

ANZL review of Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde (Nov, 2020)

ANZL review of Ko Aotearoa Tātou: We Are New Zealand (Nov, 2020)

Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship media release (Dec, 2018)

NZ Listener interview discussing On Coming Home (May, 2015)

NZ Herald interview (Feb, 2015)

Stuff.co.nz [Dominion Post] interview (June, 2015)

NZ Listener interview discussing Rangatira (July, 2012)

Radio New Zealand interview (June, 2012)