Academy of New Zealand Literature

Mohamed Hassan is an award-winning writer, journalist, podcaster and poet from Auckland and Cairo. In 2013 he won the Rising Voices Youth Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam in 2015, representing New Zealand at the Individual World Poetry Slam held in Arizona in 2016. His first collection of poetry A Felling Of Things was released in 2016, and his second collection National Anthem (Dead Bird Books, 2020) was shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Funny, elegiac and chilling, his essay collection How to be a Bad Muslim (Penguin Random House, 2022) maps the personal and public experience of being Muslim in the 21st Century through essays on identity, Islamophobia, surveillance, migration and language.

Mohamed has performed his work at TEDxAuckland, Auckland Writers Festival, NZ Writers Festival, WORD Christchurch, WOMAD, Splore and featured on TVNZ’s Breakfast and TV3’s The Project. His poems have been shared widely online, and are taught in hundreds of schools internationally.

As a journalist, Mohamed covered ethnic affairs for RNZ, investigating counterterrorism, workplace discrimination and Islamophobia. In 2017 he was awarded the Gold Trophy at the New York Radio Awards for his podcast series Public Enemy on the impacts of social and security policies on Muslim communities in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. His 2020 series The Guest House tackled community grief following the Christchurch terror attacks.

Links

Mohamed’s website

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Penguin Random House writer page

Dead Bird Books writer page

Radio NZ interview discussing How to be a Bad Muslim (June, 2022)

Stuff.co.nz  article discussing National Anthem and growing up as a migrant child (Nov, 2020)

Dominic (Tourettes) Hoey is a poet, author and playwright based in Auckland, and was an MC battle and slam-poetry champion. He has performed his poetry in Australia, Europe, England, Japan, and America. His debut novel, Iceland was a New Zealand bestseller, and long-listed for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. His poetry collection, I Thought We’d Be Famous (Dead Bird Books, 2019) looks back on Dominic’s days pre chronic illness, his guilt after escaping a life of welfare and minimum wage and the absurdity of trying to make sense of our broken society. His latest work Poor People With Money (Penguin, 2022) is a darkly comic, gritty, punch-in-the-guts new novel that captures life on the poverty line. His short story ‘1986’ won the 2021 Sunday Star Times Short Story Award open division and in 2022 he was invited to judge the competition.

As a screen writer Dominic has had short films accepted into a number of festivals including Palm Springs, The Orlando film festival, The New Zealand International Film Festival and Show Me Shorts. His autobiographical one person show, Your Heart Looks Like a Vagina, a dark comedy about living with autoimmune disease, had three sell out runs in New Zealand and was performed at the Brisbane Poetry Festival in 2017. Dominic was nominated for best new playwright at the 2018 Wellington Theatre Awards. In 2022 he was invited to participate in the Toronto International Festival of Authors.

Dominic has been a youth worker since 2014, working with marginalised youth excluded from the education system, using art, yoga and meditation to help them with their mental health and to transition into higher education or employment. Through his ‘Learn To Write Good’ creative writing course, Dominic has taught hundreds of students around the world how to think dyslexic.

His latest work 1985 (Penguin, 2025) is an electric novel about life in a multi-cultural, counter-cultural part of Auckland pre-gentrification. 1985 is an adventure story with a local flavour, a coming-of-age story for the underdogs, the disenfranchised and the dreamers. It was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

Links

Penguin NZ writer page

Dead Bird Books writer page

ANZRB review of 1985 (June, 2025)

Newsroom article: Dominic on life, drugs, disease and Poor People with Money (Aug, 2022)

Stuff article  on how Dominic learned to be a writer (Sept, 2022)

Gina Cole is a fiction writer and essayist of Fijian, Scottish, and Welsh descent. Her writing is inspired by her experiences as a queer Fijian woman. Her debut book of short stories Black Ice Matter (Huia, 2016), won the Hubert Church Prize for Best First Book Fiction at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her second book Na Viro (Huia Publishers, 2022) is a science fiction fantasy novel set in the distant future and features Pacific culture, placing Gina at the forefront of the new Pasifikafuturism genre. In the week before its launch Na Viro was the second-best selling fiction book in New Zealand.

Gina is a qualified lawyer, with an LLB (Hons) and an MJur from the University of Auckland, and practised law for 27 years. She has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Auckland and a PhD in Creative Writing from Massey University on the topic of Indigenous science fiction and Pasifikafuturism. In 2014 Gina won the Auckland Pride Festival’s creative writing competition. She is a past participant in the Auckland Writers Festival, and the Same Same But Different LGBTQI+ Festival.

Gina’s work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in numerous publications, including takahē, JAAM, Express Magazine, Span, Landfall, Geometry, The Three Lamps, Ora Nuithe, the essay collection New Writing edited by Thom Conroy, Black Marks on the White Page edited by Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makereti and Out Here: An Anthology of Takatapui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Chris Tse and Emma Barnes.

She is an Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa, and in 2018 Gina was a Writer in Residence at the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska. In 2021 she was a writer-in-residence at the Michael King Writers Centre through a residency for established Pasifika writers and also received the inaugural International Residency with Australia, a partnership between the Michael King Writers Centre and Varuna, The Writers’ House. She receives a month’s residency at Varuna in October 2022 and an appearance at the Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival.

Links

Huia Publishers writer page

NZ Society of Authors writer page

Radio NZ interview discussing Pasifikafuturism and Na Viro (July, 2022)

The Pantograph Punch: article ‘Circling Back’ by Gina about her life (July, 2021)

The Reading Room: short story ‘Sunset on Mars’ (Feb, 2021)

Radio NZ interview and reading discussing the subjects within Black Ice Matter (Oct, 2016)

Stuff review of Black Ice Matter (Sept, 2016)

Chloe Lane is a fiction writer and essayist who was born in Auckland, and has lived in Australia and the USA. She has published two books The Swimmers (2020) and Arms & Legs (2022). Her debut book The Swimmers was longlisted for the Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2021 Ockham NZ Book Awards and is described by reviewer and author Jill Ciment as ‘by turns touching, resonate, fiercely candid, and beautifully written’.  Arms & Legs is described by writer Sue Orr as a ‘gritty, sexy novel that will have you aching for its characters, for the things they can and cannot say to each other’.

Chloe earned an MFA in Fiction at the University of Florida (2017) and a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts. She is also a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. In 2021 she was the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow. She is the founding publisher and editor of Hue+Cry Press, is an Associate Editor at Contemporary HUM, and regularly writes about art for various publications. Chloe has also recently had essays published in The Spinoff, Newsroom, Pantograph Punch and Subtropics (USA).

She currently lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch, where she is a teacher at Hagley Writers’ Institute.

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Links

Chloe’s website 

ANZL review of Arms & Legs (Sept, 2022)

Bookanista interview discussing The Swimmers (May, 2022)

Radio NZ interview with Lynn Freeman discussing The Swimmers (Sept, 2020)

ANZL review of The Swimmers (Sept, 2020)

Pantograph Punch essay by Chloe on the moral dilemma of writing a novel about assisted dying (Sept, 2020)

Josh (J.P. Pomare), (Ngā Puhi) is an award winning writer who has published eight critically acclaimed books. His debut novel and first psychological thriller Call Me Evie, was published in Australia, the UK and USA and won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel. In The Clearing and The Last Guests were bestsellers, with In the Clearing adapted into a Disney+ Original series. His novel Tell Me Lies was a #1 Audible bestseller and was shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel and the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction. Josh has also received and been short listed for a number of other prizes including the KYD Unpublished Manuscript Prize, Ellen Kemp Memorial Prize, and The Kingi Mckinnon Scholarship. His 2024 novel 17 Years Later was shortlisted for both the 2025 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction, the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel and is currently being adapted for the screen.

Josh’s work has appeared in numerous journals and publications including Kill Your Darlings, Mascara Literary Review, The New Zealand Listener, The Lifted Brow, Meanjin and Takahe. In addition, he has hosted the On Writing podcast since 2015, featuring bestselling authors from around the globe. In 2020 J.P. was a recipient of the Māori Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre.

His latest work, The Gambler (Hachette, 2026), is a highly charged crime-thriller – launching an electrifying new series featuring PI Vince Reid.

‘If your prose is so clean and crisp and tidy that the readers forget they’re reading a book, then that, for me, is the best writing’ – J.P. Pomare

Links

Josh’s website

Hachette writer page

Curtis Brown writer page

E-Tangata interview discussing writing, background and Māori authors (Dec, 2021)

Newsroom review of The Last Guests (Sept, 2021)

NZ Herald interview discussing Call Me Evie (Feb, 2019)

Tayi Tibble (Ngāti Porou/Te Whānau ā Apanui) is an award winning poet and writer who has published two poetry collections. She is a graduate from the International Institute of Modern Letters and the 2017 recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize for best manuscript. Her MA portfolio was the basis for her first book, Poūkahangatus, which won the Best First Book of Poetry Award at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her second book Rangikura was shortlisted for the 2022 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Tayi’s work has been published in various journals and magazines, including Granta online, Starling, The Spinoff, Sport, Pantograph Punch, The Wireless and Poetry Magazine and the anthology The Friday Poem: 100 New Zealand Poems (Luncheon Sausage Books, 2018). Her essay ‘On Being Skux’ is one of the most-read pieces on The Pantograph Punch ever.

Tayi’s first collection Poūkahangatus (VUP, 2018) challenges a dazzling array of mythologies – Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi – peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms. Hinemoana Baker writes that ‘Tibble speaks about beauty, activism, power and popular culture with compelling guile, a darkness, a deep understanding and sensuality.’  Many of the poems in Tayi’s second collection, Rangikura (VUP, 2021) were written during the 2020 Covid Lockdown and are based in part on her own experiences growing up as a young Māori woman. She describes the book as being more personal than her first collection, and as ‘pay[ing] tribute to modern Māori culture by using the humour, sexuality and friendship that encapsulates my generation’. Reviewer Hamesh Wyatt, writing for the Otago Daily Times, described it as a ‘fiery new work’ and an ‘immersive trip’.

Tayi previously worked at Toi Māori Aotearoa, where she was the editor of the Toi Māori blog, profiling the work of emerging Māori artists and creatives. She has been a staff writer for Pantograph Punch and currently works as a publicity assistant for Te Herenga Waka University Press and as an astrologist for Metro magazine. She has appeared in major festivals nationwide in New Zealand and also the 2022 Brisbane Writers Festival. In 2018 Tayi read her poem ‘Hoki Mai’ at an Anzac Day parade attended by 25,000 people in Wellington. Her poems were included in the show UPU presented at the Silo Theatre as part of the 2020 Auckland Arts Festival, and at the Kia Mau Festival in 2021. In 2021 she appeared in the music video for Lorde’s single Solar Power. In May 2022 Tibble headlined two events at the PEN World Voices festival on international and indigenous poetry. 

Tayi lives in Pōneke, Wellington.

Links

Te Herenga Waka University Press (formerly Victoria University Press) writer page

Stuff interview discussing Rangikura (March, 2022)

RNZ interview discussing poetry – and fashion, Porirua and music (July, 2021)

Two poems in Granta from Rangikura (June, 2021)

Newsroom feature and interview discussing Rangikura (June, 2021)

Radio NZ interview discussing Poūkahangatus (June, 2018)

Kirsten McDougall is a fiction and nonfiction writer who has published three novels through Victoria University Press: The Invisible Rider (2012), Tess (2017) and She’s a Killer (2021). She was the recipient of the 2013 Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary, and a Michael King Writers Centre residency in 2019. In 2021 her story ‘Walking Day’ won the 2021 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition.

Her first book, The Invisible Rider is a series of interconnected short stories. It was included in the NZ Listener‘s top fiction picks for that year and was Kate De Goldi’s top book for 2012 on Kim Hill’s Saturday Morning radio show. Tess, a novella about a young woman with the power to see people’s memories, was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards, and shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award. Kirsten’s most recent book She’s a Killer is set in New Zealand a few years from now when the world’s climate is in crisis and New Zealand is being divided and reshaped by privileged immigrant wealthugees. In her Radio NZ review Claire Mabey describes She’s a Killer as a ‘gripping dystopia, incredible sense of humour, super accomplished’.

Kirsten also has widely published short fiction in journals and anthologies, including Monsters in the Garden: an anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand science fiction and fantasy (Victoria University Press, 2020), Landfall, Sport, Turbine, Big Weather: Poems of Wellington (2nd edition) and Tell You What: Great New Zealand Non-fiction 2016.

Kirsten was educated at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a Masters in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2004. She is the publicity manager at Victoria University Press in Wellington, and convenes the CREW 354 Long-form Fiction at the Institute of Modern Letters.

Links

Victoria University Press writer page

NZ Herald review of She’s a Killer (Nov, 2021)

Stuff review of She’s a Killer (Oct, 2021)

Newsroom review of She’s a Killer (Oct, 2021)

Sunday Star Times 2020 winning story ‘Walking Day’ (Jan, 2021)

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Johanna Emeney is a teacher, writer and editor. Her first collection, Apple & Tree (Cape Catley, 2011) introduced her to publisher Dame Christine Cole Catley (1922 – 2011) and to the Young Writers Programme, which Chris was running with Rosalind Ali. Jo ended up being a fortunate third member of this team, and enjoyed co-facilitating the YWP workshops with Ros until 2020.

Jo completed her BA, MA, and PGCE at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She gained her PhD at Massey, Auckland. Her thesis became two books. Family History (Mākaro Press, 2017) is a homage to her mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and then died in a car accident a few months afterwards. Like the nonfiction text published in 2018 (The Rise of Autobiographical Medical Poetry and the Medical Humanities) Family History discusses the relationship between doctors and patients, the disruption to family dynamics catalysed by a terminal diagnosis, and the complex processes of grief. Paula Green called the collection “a skin-shaking eye-pricking heart-skipping glorious read.” In a similar vein, the idea of a poet commenting on the medical world was well received by Jane Chamberlin reviewing in Ariel: ‘This volume should be on the desk of every physician, every medical school dean, and every English studies scholar. The Rise of Autobiographical Medical Poetry and the Medical Humanities poses urgent questions about humanizing the medical practice at a time when the wisdom of poets is desperately needed.’

A senior tutor in creative writing at Massey, Jo’s research interest is medicine and poetry. In 2020, she wrote a chapter for Routledge’s Companion to Literature and Disability, about poets from New Zealand, the USA and the UK, whose work shows formal innovation or polemical intent related to their experience of embodiment.

There are many poems featuring animals in Jo’s most recent collection, Felt (Massey University Press, 2021), but it is also about people, and about emotional connection, often using the animals as vehicles to communicate this idea. Lynley Edmeades writes for the ANZL, ‘Emeney writes a world in these pages where kindness and concern are the currency, where what is felt is the poet’s first language.’

Links

Massey University Press writer page

Mākaro Press writer page

NZ Society of Authors writer page

Landfall review of Felt (September, 2021)

ANZL review of Felt (May, 2021)

Radio NZ Saturday Morning interview with Kim Hill discussing Felt (April, 2021)

Channel Magazine interview discussing Felt (April, 2021)

Radio NZ Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan interview discussing the Poetry NZ Yearbook (March, 2020)

Nina Mingya Powles is a poet, essayist, zinemaker and editor from Wellington. In 2019 she won the Landfall Essay Competition and the Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing. Her first full-length poetry collection, Magnolia 木蘭 (Seraph Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 Forward Prize for Best First Book of Poetry and the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Nina has won the Women Poets Prize (2018), Jane Martin Prize for Poetry (2018) and the Biggs Prize for Poetry (2015). She is the author of several poetry chapbooks and zines, as well as a food memoir, Tiny Moons (The Emma Press, 2020). She is the founding editor of Bitter Melon, a small press that publishes limited-edition pamphlets by Asian poets, and is the Digital Editor of the international literary magazine Wasafiri.

Nina has participated in several festivals including in 2019 the Verb Festival (Wellington), Timber Festival (UK)  and the Wealden Literary Festival. In 2020 she was part of the Cheltenham Literary Festival, and online in the Durham Book Festival and Manchester Lit Festival.

Her debut collection of essays, Small Bodies of Water (Canongate/Allen & Unwin, 2021) explores the bodies of water that separate and connect us, as well as everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes, and the ancient lunisolar calendar to butterflies. In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together personal memories, dreams and nature writing. It reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and explores what it means to belong.

Nina’s second poetry collection, In the Hollow of the Wave (Auckland University Press, 2025), skilfully threads together themes of belonging and material inheritance against a backdrop of verse, collage and textile. From shorelines in Aotearoa, the UK and across Asia, this collection moves through words and images to explore water and the body, sewing and artmaking, personal histories and multicultural identities. In the Hollow of the Wave questions the possibilities of what a poem can be.

Links

Nina’s website

Auckland University Press writer page

The Guardian ‘Review Roundup’ announces the collections up for the Forward poetry prizes (July, 2020)

London Review poem of the week ‘Faraway Love’ (June, 2020)

Pantograph Punch review of Tiny Moons (April, 2020)

The Guardian announcement of the inaugural Women Poets’ Prize (Oct, 2018)

Gregory Kan is a poet, essayist and arts writer who has published three poetry collections. His first, This Paper Boat (Auckland UP, 2016) was shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Prize in 2013 and for the Best Poetry category at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. This Paper Boat was written during his time at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. It follows the poet as he traces his own history through the lives and written fragments of Iris Wilkinson (aka Robin Hyde), his parents, and their parents, while examining the public and private rituals of institutions ranging from the military to the medical, and of communities, families and individuals. Under Glass (Auckland University Press, 2019) is a dialogue between a series of prose poems, following a protagonist through a mysterious and threatening landscape, and a series of verse poems, driven by the speaker’s compulsive hunger to make sense of things.

Gregory completed his Bachelor of Arts at the University of Auckland in 2011 and in 2012 completed his Masters in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University Wellington. He won numerous awards during his study, including the Senior Prize in Philosophy in 2009 and the Senior Prizes in English and Philosophy in 2010 (University of Auckland), plus the Dominion Post Masters Thesis Scholarship and the IIML Jean Squire Project Scholarship in 2012 (Victoria University of Wellington). He has since been invited to various festivals including the Auckland Writers Festival and Asian Aotearoa Arts Huì.

He was a Grimshaw-Sargeson Fellow in 2017. His work has featured in literary journals such as Atlanta, Review, Cordite, Jacket, Landfall, New Zealand Listener, SPORT and Best New Zealand Poems, as well as art exhibitions, journals and catalogues. His poetry and essay works have also featured in exhibitions and publications for contemporary art institutions such as the Auckland Art Gallery, Artspace, the Adam Art Gallery, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, and the Physics Room.

Gregory’s most recent work, Clay Eaters (AUP, 2025), is a haunting new collection in which eerie jungle landscapes and silent indoor spaces, shards of history and memoir intersect. Here the author asks what it means to write the self, and what it is the living must carry. Clay Eaters was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry.

Gregory currently lives in Wellington.

Links

Gregory’s website

Auckland University Press author page

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer file

ANZRB review of Clay Eaters (May, 2025)

NZ Booklovers interview discussing Clay Eaters (March, 2025)

Interview with Cordite Review discussing poetry processes and inspiration, and freedom of expression (Nov, 2018)