Catherine Chidgey

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Catherine Chidgey’s novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific). In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. Catherine has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. She lives in Ngāruawāhia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. Her 2020 novel, Remote Sympathy, was shortlisted for the DUBLIN Literary Award and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Catherine’s novel The Axeman’s Carnival was published in 2022 and is a finalist in the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

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Laurence Fearnley

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Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist. Her novel The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards and was shortlisted for the international 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain writing. Her book Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana Book Awards. In 2004 Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and in 2007 the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. Laurence Fearnley lives in Dunedin with her husband and son.

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Patricia Berwick

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Dr Patricia Berwick was born in New Zealand and currently lives in New Zealand. She has lived and worked in Europe, USA, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Vanuatu and her native New Zealand. 

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Michael Bennett

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Michael Bennett (Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaue) is an award-winning New Zealand screenwriter and author whose films have been selected for numerous festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York. In 2008 Michael was the inaugural recipient of the Writers Award from the New Zealand Film Commission, and in 2005 he was awarded the British Council/New Zealand Writers Foundation Award. In 2011 Michael’s feature film Matariki won Best Feature Film Screenplay at the New Zealand Screenwriting Awards, and in 2013 he was awarded Best Documentary Screenplay for his documentary on the Teina Pora case, The Confessions of Prisoner T. He went on to publish In Dark Places in 2016, which won Best Non-Fiction Book at the Ngaio Marsh Awards and Best Biography/History at the Nga Kupu Ora Awards 2017. Michael lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and is Head of Screenwriting at South Seas Film School.

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Steffanie Holmes

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Steffanie Holmes is the author of steamy historical and paranormal romance. Her books feature clever, witty heroines, wild shifters, cunning witches and alpha males who get what they want.

Before becoming a writer, Steffanie worked as an archaeologist and museum curator. She loves to explore historical settings and ancient conceptions of love and possession. From Dark Age Europe to crumbling gothic estates, Steffanie is fascinated with how love can blossom between the most unlikely characters.

Steffanie lives in New Zealand with her husband and a horde of cantankerous cats. Learn more about Steffanie at her website: www.steffanieholmes.com. She also writes dark science fiction under the name S C Green.

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Margot D'Archer

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Clare Moleta

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Clare Moleta was raised on Whadjuk Noongar Country in Western Australia. Her fiction has been published in literary journals and broadcast on Radio New Zealand, and she has won awards for her travel writing. She has a Writing Diploma from RMIT University and an MA in Creative Writing from Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington. She now lives in Poneke | Wellington, Aotearoa, where she was born. 

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Patricia Donovan

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Patricia Forrester Donovan is a contemporary writer of adult fiction. She graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Master's Degree (with honours) in English Literature. After graduation she worked in corporate communications in Australia and New Zealand and is the author of best practice guide to the profession.

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Andy Southall

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Andy grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, spent too many years in the fog of London, then followed the long white cloud – and his wife – to Wellington. Always wanting to write, he completed an Advanced Certificate in Creative Writing (Novel) at Whitireia in 2015, followed by a Graduate Diploma in 2016. He writes contemporary fiction, science-fiction and travel blogs. Several of his sci-fi short stories have been published in Sponge.nz.

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Angelique Kasmara

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Angelique Kasmara has a Master of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland. She was a finalist for the Michael Gifkins Prize and won the Sir James Wallace Prize in 2016. Some of her fiction appears in Newsroom, Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand and A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices.

Angelique lives in Tāmaki Makaurau where she works as a communications manager, writer, translator and reviewer.

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Chris Gill

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Chris was born in Eastbourne in the UK to a British mother and New Zealander father. He moved to New Zealand with his family at age two where he spent over six years growing up in Auckland. It was during this time that Chris’ love for reading and writing began, spending his early years penning hundreds of short stories his mother still has tucked away.

Upon returning to the UK, Chris lived in a small town in Sussex. These years went on to inspire many of the themes in his novels, such as coming of age, small-town homophobia and isolation. Chris moved to Hampshire at age nineteen to study journalism at university.

Upon graduating, Chris moved to London and began a career in copywriting. In 2011, he published his debut book of poetry through his co-founded publishing company, PRNTD.

Chris relocated to Australia in 2014 and released his LGBTQ+ coming-of-age novel The Nowhere in 2019. His New Zealand mystery novel Boy Fallen is coming out 22 March 2022.

Chris lives in Sydney with his husband.

Fiona Leitch

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Fiona Leitch is a writer with a chequered past. She’s written for football and motoring magazines, DJ’ed at illegal raves and is a stalwart of the low budget TV commercial, even appearing as the Australasian face of a cleaning product called 'Sod Off'. After living in London and Cornwall she's finally settled in sunny New Zealand, where she enjoys scaring her cats by trying out dialogue on them. She spends her days dreaming of retiring to a crumbling Venetian palazzo, walking on the windswept beaches of West Auckland, and writing funny, flawed but awesome female characters.

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Brandy Scott

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Brandy Scott is a New Zealand-born, Dubai-based author and journalist. Over her twenty-year career, she's worked as a magazine writer, newspaper editor, and radio presenter. 

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Rose Carlyle

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Rose Carlyle is a lawyer and keen adventurer. She has crewed on scientific yachting expeditions to subantarctic islands and lived aboard her own yacht in the Indian Ocean for a year, sailing it from Thailand to South Africa via the Seychelles. Rose was a Michael King Writer in Residence in 2020. She lives in Auckland with her three children.

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Dione Jones

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For Dione Jones, writing is a long-held passion. She lives in New Zealand but was born in England and if often inspired to write about the past and changes to the English way of life, she has a Master of Creative Writing and has won an award in the National Flash Fiction competition.

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Robert Jenkins

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Robert Jenkins was born and raised in Walthamstow, East London. Running wild was his heritage but he also wrote plays for the stage, novels and short stories. He wrote poetry from a young age and read them in the early days of stand-up poetry nights in London pubs. Straddling realities can happen in great cities. He travelled the world with his wife and children and back at home lived and worked with some of the most challenging, damaged and beautiful people in society.

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Rosetta Allan

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Rosetta Allan is an Auckland based novelist, poet, and short fiction writer. Born in Putaruru, Rosetta grew up in the Hawkes Bay, then studied at the University of Auckland, obtaining her Masters of Creative Writing with First Class Honours in 2017, and was the recipient of the Sir James Wallace Masters of Creative Writing Scholarship.

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Maxine Alterio

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Maxine Alterio is a novelist, short story writer and academic mentor. She has a MA from Otago University and a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, where she studied the memoirs of First World War nurses.

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Sandra Arnold

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Sandra Arnold lives in New Zealand. She has a MLitt (High Distinction) and PhD in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University, Australia and is the author of a book on parental bereavement, Sing no Sad Songs and two novels, Tomorrow’s Empire and A Distraction of Opposites. Her first flash fiction collection Soul Etchings (Retreat West Books, UK) was published in June 2019. Her third novel, Ash (Mākaro Press, NZ) will be published in August 2019.

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Becky Manawatu

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Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu) was born in Nelson, raised in Waimangaroa and has returned there to live with her family, working as a reporter for The News in Westport. Becky’s short story ‘Abalone’ was long-listed for the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, her essay ‘Mothers Day’ has been selected for the Landfall anthology Strong Words. Auē is her first novel.

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Bruce Melrose

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Bruce Melrose grew up on New Zealand's Kapiti Coast, just north of the capital city, Wellington, and is a graduate of Massey University.

He was a Wellington track champion over 3000m steeplechase and 10,000m, and a New Zealand 3000m steeplechase representative in 1989.

He raced in the IAAF Grand Prix 3000m steeplechase in London against many of the best steeplechasers of his generation.

He lives with Ali and their two dogs Ruby and Benny.

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Stephanie Johnson

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Stephanie Johnson is the author of several collections of poetry and of short stories, some plays and adaptations, and many fine novels. The New Zealand Listener commented that ‘Stephanie Johnson is a writer of talent and distinction. Over the course of an award-winning career — during which she has written plays, poetry, short stories and novels — she has become a significant presence in the New Zealand literary landscape, a presence cemented and enhanced by her roles as critic and creative writing teacher.' the Shag Incident won the Montana Deutz Medal for Fiction in 2003, and Belief was shortlisted for the same award. Stephanie has also won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, and was the 2001 Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland. Many of her novels have been published in Australia, America and the United Kingdom. She co-founded the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival with Peter Wells in 1999.

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Lily Woodhouse

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Lily Woodhouse is the Australian pen name of award winning New Zealand author Stephanie Johnson.

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Stephanie Johnson

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Stephanie Johnson is the author of several collections of poetry and of short stories, some plays and adaptations, and many fine novels. The New Zealand Listener commented that ‘Stephanie Johnson is a writer of talent and distinction. Over the course of an award-winning career — during which she has written plays, poetry, short stories and novels — she has become a significant presence in the New Zealand literary landscape, a presence cemented and enhanced by her roles as critic and creative writing teacher.' the Shag Incident won the Montana Deutz Medal for Fiction in 2003, and Belief was shortlisted for the same award. Stephanie has also won the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, and was the 2001 Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland. Many of her novels have been published in Australia, America and the United Kingdom. She co-founded the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival with Peter Wells in 1999.

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Rob Elliott

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Rob Elliott, a New Zealander, is a member and former President of his local U3A Chapter. He has travelled widely during his career in the Motor Industry. Since retirement he has written and published a memoir and five novels.

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Christina O'Reilly

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Christina O’Reilly is a writer, freelance proofreader, and copy editor currently living in the Manawatu. Two of her short stories have been published in the anthologies Horizons 3 and The Rangitawa Collection 2017. Her first crime novel, Into the Void, was recently longlisted for the 2019 Michael Gifkins Memorial Prize for an Unpublished Novel.

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Frances Housden

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Frances Housden lives in New Zealand, a beautiful country not so very different from Scotland, where she was born. She began her career as a published writer after winning Romance Writers of New Zealands prestigious Clendon Award. She went on to pen six very successful novels for Silhouette Books, where she merged her penchant for characterisation with her love of suspense. She is now delving into the world of historical romance, using her love of history to take her readers on an exciting trip into the lives of memorable characters.

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Jennifer Palgrave

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Jennifer Palgrave is the pen name of new writing partnership Lois Cox and Hilary Lapsley. Both are experienced writers of non-fiction.

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Carmel Reilly

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Carmel Reilly writes for children and adults. She has worked as an educational writer for almost two decades and is the author of more than 300 titles of fiction and non-fiction for children and young teens. In 2011 she won the Partners in Crime Short Story award and in 2016 she was awarded a Varuna Residental Fellowship to develop her first novel, Life Before. Born in New Zealand, she now lives in Melbourne, Australia.

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Cherie Mitchell

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Cherie Mitchell is an Amazon bestselling author with a number of short story prizes, book awards, and literary commendations to her name. Her biggest prize to date was a complimentary trip across the world when her book The House At Sailor's Bay was ranked as a finalist in the Litnet Small Towns, Big Stories Contest.

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Shauna Bickley

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Shauna writes crime novels featuring characters who aren't afraid to solve mysteries, find murderers, and generally get themselves in all sorts of danger. In real life, Shauna wouldn't be found doing any of these things.

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Nalini Singh

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I was born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand. I also spent three years living and working in Japan, during which time I took the chance to travel around Asia. I’m back in New Zealand now, but I’m always plotting new trips. If you’d like to see some of my travel snapshots, have a look at the Travel Diary page (updated every month).

So far, I've worked as a lawyer, a librarian, a candy factory general hand, a bank temp and an English teacher and not necessarily in that order. Some might call that inconsistency but I call it grist for the writer's mill.
 

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Catherine Lea

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Catherine lives with a fox terrier that thinks he owns the house. She has sold international satellite capacity, worked in IT recruitment, and run her own communications store.

When Catherine isn't writing, she's dog-wrangling, wrestling with technology, or going crazy trying to maintain control of the yard.

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Thomas W. Devine

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He currently lives in the capital city of New Zealand with his wife & ex SPCA cat, Dudley.

When he's writing a novel (he has published twelve in twelve years) he works every day of the week, in the mornings, for 3-5 hours. A retired pensioner,it's his only paid employment.

 

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Karen Cossey

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Karen has always written stories, many over the recent years for her writers group. You can download her collection of young children's stories, "Cinderella Sarah" FOR FREE from here: http://www.karencossey.com/childrens-...

Having home-schooled her two children for five years, she tries to put something of her love of family and joy of living into her writing. She lives in beautiful New Zealand, near to the beach, along with her husband, her two kids who are now teenagers, and a very practical People Mover vehicle which looks nothing like the Ferrari she dreams of. Nor the unicorn. Worst of all, it doesn't come with a chauffeur or even a taxi driver so she also dreams about the day her teenagers get their own driving licences. :)

Being a writer she obviously has a cat, who is called Marbles and likes to talk with her other pet, Milly the goat. 

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Ella West

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Ella West, the pen name of Karen Trebilcock, was born in Invercargill, New Zealand and writes novels for young adults. She now lives on a rural property near Mosgiel, Dunedin, with her husband and two sons. As well as writing fiction, she also works part time as a journalist. Her next book Rain Fall is due out in January 2018.

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Rodney Strong

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Writing is one of those things that I have always done. I vividly remember spending most of an English exam writing a complicated adventure story as the answer to an exam question. I passed the exam, either because of, or despite the answer. 

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Andrea Jacka

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Andrea lives in Orewa, New Zealand. When not working or writing she can be found either inching through the novels of Charles Dickens with reasonable success; learning to stand-up paddle board with fair to middling success; or attempting to limit quaffing of bubbles with little to no success.

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Linda Coles

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Hi, I’m Linda Coles, an English woman now living in New Zealand.

I’ve written marketing books and a couple of romance books, and have now settled on crime as my chosen genre, since that’s what I enjoy reading the most.

I developed the DS Amanda Lacey series back in 2017 and have watched her and her colleagues grow over the stories, through their work as well as their personal lives. Jack Rutherford is her work partner, and is a bit of a ‘Maigret’; as for Amanda herself, I can’t think of anyone she’d be like except maybe like lots of women. She’s honourable, savvy, loving and wears well-polished Doc Martin boots with her sensible work suit, so that should tell you something of her nature. Together the duo work the strangest of crimes in Croydon, UK. I do like to give them both modern cases to solve, quite often involving the dark web for a bit of extra intrigue.
 

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Giovanni Rex

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Giovanni Rex’s noir-ish novels cut a broad swath across the contemporary genre. This is part due to the complexity of time shifts, narrative voices, and bizarre characterizations. Part thriller, part literary musing, the author’s tone is a times a moral cry for a better society, with more compassion, less violence, but at others the pages are awash with blood and sex. Whom ever the author is, and there are plenty of hints within his novels to assume there is another hand behind the declared writer, an excellent puppet master is pulling the literary strings. He/she has taken the noir convention and cut it to pieces.

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J.P. Pomare

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J.P. Pomare is an award-winning writer who has had work published in journals including MeanjinKill Your DarlingsTakahe and Mascara Literary Review. He has hosted the On Writing podcast since 2015 featuring bestselling authors from around the globe. He was born in New Zealand and resides in Melbourne with his wife.

 

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Linda Olsson

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Linda Olsson lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Her debut 'Let me sing you gentle songs' was published in September 2005 in New Zealand. Since then the rights for it have been sold to many countries. It has now been published in the US and Canada under the title 'Astrid and Veronika' as well as in her country of birth, Sweden (Låt mig sjunga dig milda sånger).

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Lawrence Hebb

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Lawrence is an ex soldier who also spent a number of years in the Middle East working with an Evangelical Christian relief and development organization. This gives me a unique perspective on things that I believe are reflected in my writing. An ability to 'look behind' what's happening and give a unique perspective reflected in the stories I write.

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Karen Zelas

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Karen Zelas lives in quake-struck Christchurch. A former psychiatrist and psychotherapist, she returned to university, taking creative writing papers at Canterbury University in preparation for giving up her day job.

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Nathan Blackwell

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Nathan Blackwell was raised on Auckland's North Shore and attended Westlake Boys High School before commencing a ten-year career in the New Zealand Police. Seven of those years were spent as a Detective in the Criminal Investigation Branch, where he was exposed to human nature at its strongest and bravest, but also at its most depraved and horrific.

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John Rosanowski

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John Rosanowski was born in Reefton and studied history at the University of Canterbury. He has written articles on West Coast history for newspapers,magazines and the NZ Journal of History.

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Michalia Arathimos

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Michalia Arathimos is a Greek / New Zealand writer who lives in Melbourne with her partner and two sons. She is a prize-winning author of short stories and essays, and winner of the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards, 2016. She works as a freelance editor and is the fiction reviewer for Melbourne magazine Overland.

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Genesis Cotterell

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I live with Ruth in Napier, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. Napier is located on the eastern coast of the North Island. I have lived here since May 2015. NAPIER is a popular place for tourists because of its unique 1930's Art Deco architecture. Most of the city had to be rebuilt after the earthquake of 1931 which destroyed just about all the city buildings. It also has a beautiful Marine Parade. The temperatures in summer are often 30 -33 degrees.

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Danyl McLauchlan

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Danyl McLauchlan was born in Wellington in 1974. He studied at Victoria University, and worked and travelled in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, before he returned to Wellington where he works as a biologist.

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Charity Norman

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Charity Norman was born in Uganda and brought up in successive draughty vicarages in Yorkshire and Birmingham. After several years' travel she became a barrister, specialising in crime and family law in the northeast of England. Also a mediator, she is passionate about the power of communication to slice through the knots. In 2002, realising that her three children had barely met her, she took a break from the law and moved with her family to New Zealand.  Charity currently lives in Napier, New Zealand 

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Kirsten McKenzie

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A former Customs Officer, Kirsten McKenzie fought international crime for several years before leaving to help run the family antique shop. Ten years of surrounding herself with beautiful old things resulted in the publication of her first novel and her evolvement into a full time author.

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Rose Beecham

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Recipient of the 2006 Alice B. Readers' Appreciation Award. Born in beautiful New Zealand, the author now resides in the Midwest with her partner and a menagerie of animals. When she is not writing or reading, she loves to explore the mountains and prairies near her home, a landscape eternally and wonderfully foreign to her. Jennifer first published lesbian mysteries under this pen name with the Naiad Press in the 1990s. Her Amanda Valentine series was also published by Silver Moon in England, and in translation by Frauenoffensive in Germany.

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Tanya Moir

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Tanya Moir grew up in a small town in Southland, the deep south of New Zealand, and now lives on the west coast of Auckland with her husband and a large dog. 

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Brannavan Gnanalingam

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Brannavan Gnanalingam is a critically-acclaimed novelist from the Hutt Valley, New Zealand. His previous novel Credit in the Straight World about a small town finance company collapse drew comparisons with A Confederacy of Dunces and Charles Dickens, whilst his other books have examined Kiwis travelling in Paris and West Africa. This, his fourth novel, is his first set in Wellington. He hopes - one day - to write a novel about cricket.

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John Daysh

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John is a sixth generation New Zealander through his maternal blood lines and the Great, Great, Great, Grandson of John Daysh whom arrived in New Zealand in 1841 from Hamshire, England. Just two years after the Treaty of Waitangi which granted Britain dual sovereignty (with the indigenous Maori) over New Zealand. He is a proud New Zealander who knows Thailand well.   http://www.chiangmaicitylife.com/news/keeping-track-of-john-daysh-an-int...

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Nikki Crutchley

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After seven years of working as a librarian in New Zealand and overseas, Nikki now works as a freelance proofreader and copy editor. She lives in the small Waikato town of Cambridge in New Zealand with her husband and two girls.  Nikki has been writing on and off her whole life and recently has had success in flash fiction. She has been published in Flash Frontier, Flash Fiction Magazine and Mayhem Literary Journal. Crime/thriller/mystery novels are her passion. Nothing Bad Happens Here is her fist novel (but hopefully not her last), set on the Coromanadel Coast of New Zealand.

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Jennifer Lane

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I had my first taste of literary success at the age of eleven when I won St Michael’s Primary School’s Year Six creative writing competition with my dramatic World War II piece, Dominic Finds a Way. Twenty-four comparatively unsuccessful years later, I was one of the winners of NZ Book Month’s Six Pack Twocompetition with Scout’s Honour, an extract from an early draft of what was to become All Our Secrets. My short stories have been published in journals and magazines both here and across the Tasman, including Southerly: Writers and their Journals (Australia), Pulp (NZ), Viola Beadleton’s Compendium (NZ) and Island (Australia).

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Mike Boshier

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Born in Bristol, England, I was always an avid reader. I've worked in Europe and travelled fairly extensively. I have written various sailing articles and had them published in magazines. Having lived and worked in the Middle East for a number of years, I believe I have a good understanding of the region. I used that experience to write my first full novel 'The Jaws of Revenge' quickly followed by my second, 'Terror of the Innocent'. Both star US Navy SEAL John Deacon and some of his colleagues in the Pentagon. Both also feature his adversary, Saif the Palestinian - an ex-Navy traitor whose mission in life is to destroy the West and, in particular, the USA.

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Eleanor Catton

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Eleanor Catton (born 1985) is a New Zealand author. Catton was born in Canada while her father, a New Zealand graduate, was completing a doctorate at the University of Western Ontario. She lived in Yorkshire until the age of 13, before her family settled in Canterbury, New Zealand. She studied English at the University of Canterbury, and completed a Master's in Creative Writing at The Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington. She wrote her first novel, The Rehearsal, as her master's thesis.Eleanor Catton holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she also held an adjunct professorship, and an MA in fiction from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. Currently she teaches creative writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology.

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Barbara Ewing

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About the Author EWING, Barbara ( - ) is an actor and novelist whose first novel, Strangers (1978) was not followed up by a second for twenty years, when The Actresses was published in 1997. Born and educated in New Zealand, Ewing has spent most of her life living and working as an actor in London. Mistakenly assumed by many critics and readers to be Ewing's first book, The Actresses was a popular and acclaimed novel. It is described in The Times as combining "elements of courtroom drama and comedy of manners, as well as sharp insights into the harsher realities of theatrical life."

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Adam Sarafis

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Adam Sarafis is the creation of authors Linda Olsson and Thomas Sainsbury.  Linda Olsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1948. She left Sweden in 1986 and has lived in Kenya, Singapore, the UK and Japan, before settling in New Zealand. Her first novel, Let me sing you gentle songs (aka Astrid & Veronica) became an international bestseller, and has been followed by three more novels. She divides her time between Auckland and Stockholm. Thomas Sainsbury was born in Matamata, New Zealand. After graduating from the University of Auckland he pursued a career in theatre, television and comedy. His darkly comic plays have been performed throughout New Zealand and in Australia, USA, UK, Greece and France. He co-wrote the award-winning New Zealand television comedy Super City and the Vietnamese.

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Linda Olsson

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Linda Olsson lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Her debut 'Let me sing you gentle songs' was published in September 2005 in New Zealand. Since then the rights for it have been sold to many countries. It has now been published in the US and Canada under the title 'Astrid and Veronika' as well as in her country of birth, Sweden (Låt mig sjunga dig milda sånger).

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Donna Malane

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Donna Malane is a writer, television producer, script and series advisor, script writer, story-liner, script and story editor and developer. She has written a huge variety of television including drama, crime-drama and doco-drama, fantasy, children’s drama, sketch comedy, and documentary. Although Donna’s writing has largely been for television she has also had two other books published and her plays and short stories have been broadcast on National Radio.  

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David McGill

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David McGill is a New Zealand social historian who has published 53 books. Born in Auckland, educated in the Bay of Plenty and at a Christchurch seminary, he trained as a teacher and did a BA at Victoria University of Wellington. He worked as a feature writer for The Listener, Sydney’s The Bulletin, London’s TVTimes, wrote columns for the Evening Post in Wellington and edited a local lifestyle magazine before becoming a full-time writer in 1984. His book subjects include Ghost Towns of New Zealand and the country’s first bushranger, local and national heritage buildings, Kiwi prisoners of war, the history of the NZ Customs Department, a biography of a criminal lawyer, a personal history of rock music, a rail journey around the country, historical and comic novels, several thrillers and six collections of Kiwi slang. He collects owl figurines and reads thrillers.

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Jennifer Barraclough

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My first career was in orthodox medicine. I worked in the hospital specialties of cancer care and general psychiatry, and spent some time in rural general practice. From 1991-2000 I held the post of Consultant in Psychological Medicine at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, England. I published a number of medical books and research papers. Then I moved to Auckland with my New Zealand-born husband, and trained as a Bach Foundation Registered Practitioner and Life Coach. Writing is now my main pursuit, with several books on holistic healing and natural therapies, three short novels and another on the way. I also edited my uncle's memoir 'Geoffrey Guy's War: Memoirs of a Spitfire Pilot'. Other interests are choral singing and animal welfare.

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J.L. O'Rourke

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A romantic mystery set at a beautiful lake in the South Island of New Zealand. Andrea North is looking forward to a job at Lake Waihola as a way to escape from a man who tried to control her life, but an easy task is soon complicated by a house with a secret hoard, dead birds, and a close encounter with a callous but good looking pig hunter. When the campground dog pulls a gruesome object from the lake, Andy discovers who she can trust as the police and the pig hunter involve her in their hunt for a missing man.

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Carolyn Hawes

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Carolyn Hawes was born in Westport. From the age of 14 she began writing poetry and then turned to short story writing. Later she researched and wrote a local history book, Great Expectations: the Colonisation of Buller. She has written articles for the local Westport paper, The News, including a column containing 25 biographical stories about Westport's mayors from 1873 until 1983 and has had freelance articles in The Press, Nelson Mail and various journals.

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Dan Raberts

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I am a writer of fantasy novels and speculative fiction, sometime narrator of podcasts (including stories for the Hugo award-winning StarShipSofa), occasional sailor of sailing things, and father of two wee miracles in a little house on a hill, under the southern sun.

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D.A. Crossman

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David (D.A.) Crossman is a novelist and short story writer with a passion for flawed detectives, sinister spies, and femme fatales. English on his father’s side and Norwegian on his mother’s, David was born in South Africa and raised in South East London. David spent a number of years as an itinerant worker and he has resided in France, Israel, India, and Australia before settling down in rural New Zealand where he now lives with his family and their clowder of cats. He is currently employed (without remuneration) by his children as a cook, chauffeur, cleaner, gardener, and general dogsbody. When he isn’t ‘singing’ disharmoniously to the soundtrack of loud progressive rock music or shouting intemperately at the football on the TV, David can be found staring absently at the blank computer screen in the study.

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S.L. Beaumont

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SL Beaumont is the author of the young adult romantic mystery saga, The Carlswick Mysteries. She lives in beautiful New Zealand with her husband, three teenage sons and an enormous fluffy cat. Her passion for travel has seen her take many long haul flights from New Zealand. Her love of history helps determine the destination and the places she visits are a constant source of inspiration for her. She is a Chartered Accountant by day, having worked in London, New York and Auckland, and an author by night.

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Colin D Peel

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About the Author Colin D. Peel is the author of more than 20 novels, most of which have been published in the UK. His last novel to be published in New Zealand was White Desert (2002). British by birth, Colin spent many years working in the aerospace industries of USA, Europe and Canada as a weapons systems engineer. His writing often reflects his knowledge of classified defence projects. Colin and his wife now live in Waiuku, Auckland.

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Ray Berard

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Ray Berard is a Canadian-born Kiwi writer based in Christchurch, New Zealand. A McGill University graduate and five-year member of the NZ authors association, writing has always been his passion, and in recent years a full-time one. 

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Thomas Ryan

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Thomas Ryan has been a soldier in a theatre of war, traded in Eastern Europe, trampled the jungles of Asia and struggled through the trials of love and loss: ideal life experiences for a would-be author. Schooled by professionals who have helped him hone his literary style, Ryan is quickly establishing himself as a skilled writer of riveting thrillers and short stories. He considers himself foremost a storyteller, a creator who has plunged his psyche into the world of imagination and fantasy. Taking readers on a thrilling journey is what motivates Ryan as a writer.

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Adam Christopher

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Adam Christopher was born in Auckland, New Zealand. In 2006, he moved to the sunny North West of England, where he lives in domestic bliss with wife and cat in a house next to a canal. Adam’s short fiction has appeared in Pantechnicon, Hub, and Dark Fiction Magazine. Adam's debut novel, Empire State, is due from Angry Robot in January 2012. When not writing Adam can be found drinking tea and obsessing over Dark Shadows, DC Comics, and 1960s Doctor Who. Adam is also very bad at épée but knows that Thibault cancels out Capa Ferro, unless the enemy has studied his Agrippa. Which he has.

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Adam K. Childs

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Adam Childs was born in Kent, England in 1960. He emigrated to Canada in 1973 and to New Zealand in 2010. He has travelled extensively, much of it as part of his work with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). He has been interested in writing since he was a teenager but never found the time until now: Despite having written many academic articles, reports and analyses for work purposes, Schrödinger's Cabinet is his first published fiction novel. Although he is a great fan of detective fiction, he never intended to write in that genre; he was motivated to write Schrödinger's Cabinet more for its political aspects than the detective angle. That said, he found the process so much fun he plans on continuing to write novels featuring Detectives King and Pasternak.

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Ben Sanders

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Twenty-year-old Ben Sanders’ fascination with crime fiction has paid off. Born and bred on Auckland’s North Shore, Sanders has been hooked on Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Cormac McCarthy and Pete Dexter since the age of thirteen, and now he’s put his interest in these big-selling authors to work. A keen writer since his teens, Sanders is also passionate about music; he wrote his first novel while listening to the tunes of R.E.M, Nick Cave, Grant-Lee Phillips, and The Mutton Birds and even found time to study engineering at the University of Auckland.

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Warren Olson

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Warren Olson didn't set out to be an author ; nor for that matter did he envisage he would become one of the most well known and successful Western private investigators to operate in South East Asia. .... A few years later he repatriated to his native New Zealand, where following an interest in Transnational crime he completed a masters degree in Strategic studies and penned an award winning research paper on cross cultural interviewing.

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Nick Spill

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I was born in England, Lived in London and immigrated to New Zealand where I learned to play rugby, chase girls and play the viola and guitar. During the 1970s I worked for the National Art Gallery and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. 

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Tina Clough

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Tina Clough grew up in Sweden and now lives in Hawke's Bay New Zealand. She left a career in corporate administration and divides her time between writing and looking after a one-acre field full of fruit trees, hens and various forms of wildlife, and taking visitors on wine tours.

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Mike White

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Mike White is a senior writer at North & South magazine. He investigated Scott Guy's murder for more than a year and was present throughout Ewen Macdonald's five-week trial. At the 2013 Canon Media Awards, he won the Magazine Feature Writer of the Year award for his coverage of the case.

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Fiona Sussman

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Born in South Africa, now living in New Zealand, Fiona is a former GP who hung up her stethoscope ten years ago to pursue another longheld dream – to write. She has written a number of highly acclaimed short stories, and her debut novel novel, "Shifting Colours", was published in the UK in 2014 and in the USA in Oct 2015 under the title, "Another Woman's Daughter". Her second novel, " The Last Time We Spoke" was released in May 2016. When not juggling family life, or helping manage the charitable surgical service she and her husband established, she writes and loves it.

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Julie Thomas

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Julie started writing at the age of eight, stories about pre-revolutionary Russian princesses who rode troikas through the snow. She has worked in the media for over 25 years, radio, TV and film. She has written three novels and seven feature film scripts. In 2011 she sold her house in Auckland and moved two hours south to Cambridge, a glorious English style village, not unlike St Mary Mede. She shares her house with a highly intelligent and manipulative, but affectionate cat, Chloe, and is passionate about music, cooking and sport. She writes from the heart about subjects that she feels passionate about and her motto is "To dream of the person you could be is to waste the person you are." And also, "It was a brave man who ate the first oyster."

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Damien Wilkins

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Damien Wilkins writes fiction, and he has published short stories, novels, and poetry. His writing has been described as ‘exuberant and evocative, subtle and exact, aware of its own artifice yet relishing the idiosyncrasies and possibilities of language’. Wilkins has had books published in New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and he has won and been nominated for a range of prizes and awards. He also edited the award-winning anthology, Great Sporting Moments: The best of Sport magazine 1988-2004 published in 2005.

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Fiona Kidman

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Fiona Kidman is a leading contemporary novelist, short story writer and poet. Much of her fiction is focused on how outsiders navigate their way in narrowly conformist society. She has published a large and exciting range of fiction and poetry, and has worked as a librarian, producer and critic. Kidman has won numerous awards, and she has been the recipient of fellowships, grants and other significant honours, as well as being a consistent advocate for New Zealand writers and literature. She is the President of Honour for the New Zealand Book Council, and has been awarded an OBE and a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature. 

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Neil Cross

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Neil Cross lives in New Zealand with his wife and two sons.  in 2006 Neil began working for Spooks, the BBC drama series set in the MI5 world of espionage.  In 2007, the Spooks production company Kudos asked Neil to work as lead writer for the Spooks Series 6.  He wrote four episodes of ten including the epic opening two parter.  The series will air in the UK in late 2007.  Neil is now working on a number of other television and film projects, as well as a new novel.

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Tina Shaw

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TINA SHAW has published a wide range of fiction for adults and children. Her short stories have been published in anthologies, literary magazines, and been broadcast on Radio New Zealand. She has held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency, and was the 2005 Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato. Her latest publication is the Bateman New Zealand Writer's Handbook. She is a manuscript assessor and creative writing tutor, and her website is http://www.tinashaw.co.nz

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Ken Smith

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Ken Smith was born in London, England. He was educated in South Africa, mainly at Durban High School and Natal University. He is an admitted Attorney of the High Courts of South Africa and Lesotho, Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand and Legal Practitioner of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia, who practised law in South Africa for many years. He now resides in New Zealand.

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Jane Woodham

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Jane Woodham moved in 1998 from London to Dunedin, New Zealand, where she has been writing for the past nine years. Jane’s work has twice been shortlisted for the BNZ Literary Awards and has been published in New Zealand and the UK. A New Zealand Society of Authors mentorship in 2014 allowed Jane to work with crime writer Paddy Richardson on the final draft of Twister, her first novel. Some events in Twister occur around the Dunedin Hot Salt Water Pool, where Jane is a regular swimmer. She is also a keen gardener, cook and fair-weather surfer.

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Leonie Mateer

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Puppeteer, children's entertainer, owner of a model agency, TV talk show panelist, luxury accommodation owner, entrepreneur: storyteller Leonie Mateer has lived a full and diverse life.  Born and raised in New Zealand, Mateer moved to the United States in her 30s to pursue business opportunities. She returned to New Zealand for several years in the 2000s, running a luxury lodge in Northland - which has been an inspiration for her crime series - and now splits her time between Northland and the United States. 

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T.A. Maclagan

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T.A. Maclagan is a Kansas girl by birth but now lives in the bush-clad hills of Wellington, New Zealand with her Kiwi husband, son and four pampered cats. With a bachelor’s degree in biology and a Ph.D. in anthropology, she’s studied poison dart frogs in the rainforests of Costa Rica, howler monkeys in Panama and the very exotic and always elusive American farmer. It was as she was writing her ‘just the facts’ dissertation that T.A. felt the call to pursue something more imaginative and discovered a passion for creative writing. 

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Alan Carter

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Alan Carter was born in Sunderland, UK, in 1959.  He holds a degree in Communication Studies from Sunderland Polytechnic and immigrated to Australia in 1991.  Alan lives in Fremantle with his wife Kath and son Liam.  He works as a television documentary director.  In his spare time he follows a black line up and down the Fremantle pool. 

Robert Glancy

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I was born in Zambia and raised in Malawi – a country known as the Warm Heart of Africa but made famous as the place where Madonna finds her children.  At 14 I moved from the warm heart of Africa to the cold lungs of Edinburgh, where I discovered the true meaning of the term ‘culture shock’.  After Edinburgh I studied history at Cambridge. Then off to London where, before I had time to find a career, a career in communications found me.  In my search to return to warmer weather, I moved to beautiful New Zealand in 2003, where I have lived ever since with my wife and two children. Except for 2014 where I moved to France and divided my time very unevenly between cat-sitting and writing my second book. The cat just about survived - sorry Molly! - and I finished my second book - Please Do Not Disturb. I am now back in New Zealand writing book three.

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Vanda Symon

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Vanda Symon grew up in Tauranga and Hawkes Bay before heading south to study at the University of Otago.  After graduating with a Bachelor of Pharmacy, Vanda returned to Hawkes Bay to work as a pharmacist in the community and local hospice.  After starting a family and making the decision to be at home with the children, she had the opportunity to indulge in her love of writing.  Vanda now lives in Dunedin with her husband and two young boys.

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Craig Marriner

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Craig Marriner (born 1974) is a novelist from Rotorua, New Zealand. His 2001 novel Stonedogs won a Montana New Zealand Book Award and in 2003 the film rights were sold to Australian production company Mushroom Pictures, a film based on the book is currently in production. His second novel Southern Style was published in 2006. He is currently working on a third novel about a group of backpackers trekking through Europe during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

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Chad Taylor

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Chad Taylor was born in New Zealand in November 1964. He grew up in Manurewa, South Auckland and read English and Art History while doing a Fine Arts degree at Auckland University's Elam School of Fine Arts. ("I wanted to do something creative and I wanted to find out how art worked. Also, all my favourite bands had gone to art school," he says.) While studying he wrote music and film reviews for Rip It Up magazine.

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Cat Connor

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Cat lives in the Wellington region of New Zealand with her husband (Action Man), and their youngest children (The Boy Wonder, Squealer and Breezy). They share their home with a cat named Missy and Romeo the Greyhound. Cat has found the time to author 11 novels her latest being The _Byte series featuring Supervisory Special Agent Ellie Conway - published by Rebel e Publishing.  When Cat is not writing she is sewing, tie-dying, reading, or hanging out with her  family and the Admins. (Admin One, Admin Bubbles and Cat spent April 2011 in the USA, they had a fabulous time and managed not to get arrested...)

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Liam McIlvanney

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Professor Liam McIlvanney, the son of novelist William McIlvanney, was born in Kilmarnock in Ayrshire, and studied at Glasgow and Oxford Universities. After ten years lecturing in Scottish and Irish literature at the University of Aberdeen, he moved to Dunedin in New Zealand to teach at the University of Otago. He lectures in Scottish literature, culture and history, and on Irish-Scottish literary connections, and holds the Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies chair at the University. He won a Saltire Award for his first book, Burns the Radical, in 2002. A chance meeting with an editor for Faber and Faber persuaded him to turn to fiction, and his first novel, All the Colours of the Town, was published in 2009. He is currently working on a second novel featuring journalist Gerry Conway. He has also written reviews and criticism for the London Review of Books, The Guardian, and others. He lives in Dunedin with his wife and children.

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Ben Atkins

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Ben Atkins completed the first draft of his first novel aged only seventeen, and yet writes with the maturity of a forty year old. He is a student of Political Studies and Film & Media Studies at Auckland University. He has a deep interest in how politics permeates and defines society. 

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John Ling

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John Ling is a Malaysian-born writer based in New Zealand. By day, he works as a producer at TVNZ, the nation's largest broadcaster. By night, he is the managing editor of Kia Kaha Press, a publishing imprint. His thriller, The Blasphemer, is available now as an e-book from  Amazon.com

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Brian Stoddart

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Professor Brian Stoddart is an international consultant who works mainly on higher education reform in Asia and the Middle East, and is currently Distinguished Fellow of the Australia India Institute based at the University of Melbourne.    He trained as a South Asianist then also became an international authority on sport and culture.  His academic career was spent in Australia, Malaysia, Canada and Barbados, and he finished his formal career with a term as Vice-Chancellor and President at La Trobe University in Australia.  In addition to his formal work he is a regular contributor to regular and new media as a columnist and commentator.

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Trish McCormack

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I write crime fiction by night and work as an archivist by day. I grew up at Franz Josef Glacier and worked in various national parks before spending 10 years as a journalist on a small-town newspaper. I set my mysteries in some of New Zealand's most beautiful places. My glacier guide sleuth Philippa Barnes lives the dream, retreating to the icy spaces of the glacier when she needs time alone.

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Elizabeth Knox

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Elizabeth Knox is the author of eight novels for adults and one of New Zealand's most successful writers - she lives in Wellington with her husband and son. Daylight has had critics in the US comparing Knox to the Queen of the vampire novelists saying Daylight is "on a par with the best Anne Rice has to offer" and calling it an "illuminating tour-de-force", while Metro called it "mysterious, thrilling, erotic". Her 2001 novel Black Oxen was published simultaneously in the US, the UK and New Zealand and was a NZ number one bestseller. Billie's Kiss made a spectacular entry into the NZ bestseller list on the strength of one afternoon's sales and then shot straight to number one in the following list. Billie's Kiss was shortlisted in the 2002 Montana NZ Book Awards.

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Gaelyn Gordon

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GORDON, Gaelyn, (1939 - 1997) wrote fiction for children and adults. Gaelyn Gordon was born in Hawera in 1939. She taught English and Drama at Hamilton Girls' High School until 1987, when she took a year's sick leave and used the time to write, which she continued to do full-time until her death in 1997. Gordon wrote that she enjoyed the process of letting her writing unfold and being surprised by the results: 'which is why I haven't gone back to teaching. I know the people I teach are going to turn out to be adults, and often have a fairly good idea of what sort of adults they'll be; I haven't the faintest idea what the story I'm writing at the moment is going to turn out to be.'

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Edmund Bohan

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BOHAN, Edmund (1935 - ) is an historian and fiction writer who is a leading authority on 19th century New Zealand political history. He is also a former professional singer who, during a long career of over forty years, sang all over the world and released a number of commercial recordings. Bohan's first published books, written while he was touring Britain as a singer, were historical novels for junior readers, The Writ of Green Wax (1990), and The Buckler (1972). During his time in the UK he was also commissioned to write a centennial history of the Incorporated Society of Musicians The First Hundred Years (1982). On his return to New Zealand in 1987 Bohan decided to devote more time to writing and historical research. The first book published after his return was the acclaimed biography Edward Stafford: New Zealand's First Statesman (1994). The Daily Telegraph writes: "The book is essential reading for all interested in New Zealand history, philosophy or politics." The Nelson Evening Mail describes it as "a tour de force, one of the finest political biographies of the last decade."

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Ngaio Marsh

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Dame Ngaio Marsh DBE (April 23, 1895 - February 18, 1982), born Edith Ngaio Marsh was an author and theatre director from New Zealand. There is some uncertainty over her birth date as her father neglected to register her birth until 1900, but she is believed to have been born in Christchurch on 23 April 1899. Marsh worked as an actress, theatrical producer and interior decorator before publishing her first novel, A Man Lay Dead, in 1934. This, and all subsequent novels, featured her series character Chief-Inspector Roderick Alleyn. 

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Lindsey Grey

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Colin D Peel

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About the Author Colin D. Peel is the author of more than 20 novels, most of which have been published in the UK. His last novel to be published in New Zealand was White Desert (2002). British by birth, Colin spent many years working in the aerospace industries of USA, Europe and Canada as a weapons systems engineer. His writing often reflects his knowledge of classified defence projects. Colin and his wife now live in Waiuku, Auckland.

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Vonnie Hughes

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Our family were all born in New Zealand and now live in Queensland, the sunshine state of Australia. Nobody else in my family writes, but in the latter part of the 19th century my antecedents published newspapers and were authors. Blood will out, as they say. I've always written - poetry and short stories as a child; then later on in life as our kids grew older I began writing novels, probably to counteract the stultifying boredom of being a legal executive.

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Lindy Kelly

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Lindy Kelly is a former event rider herself and has maintained her love of and interest in horses on the family farm in Nelson. Lindy is also a journalist, poet and playwright.

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Jennifer Mortimer

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Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Jennifer Mortimer holds degrees in English Literature, Philosophy and Information Science. She is now a project manager for Weta Digital in Wellington - the people behind the special effects for The Hobbit, Avatar and Ironman. Jennifer and her husband, Paul, and their two daughters live in Wellington, New Zealand.

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Geoffrey Robert

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Geoffrey Robert is a New Zealand-born author, journalist and former communications advisor. He is also a father who cares about the state of the planet his children will inherit. He has travelled widely, witnessing first hand the swelling disparities in wealth and influence at the root of many of the world's problems. From the dazzle of Times Square to the clogged alleyways of India, the orderly streets of London to the chaotic bus stations of Kenya, the bountiful swagger of Sydney to the dirt floor poverty of Timor Leste. His love of the outdoors and passion for keeping things natural has taken him to ancient mountain trails in the Sinai, elephant watering holes in southern Africa and to the primeval rainforests of his homeland.

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Dinah Holman

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Dinah Holman QSO 1988 for public services to heritage, MA, DIP TP is a nationally known heritage planning consultant and author. She was chair of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust (1986-90); executive director of the Auckland Heritage Trust (1985-89); a member of the Auckland Institute and Museum Council (1991-94), and a member of the Auckland Library Heritage Trust (1998- ). She received the NZPI Distinguished Service Award in 1992 She is the A.R.D. Fairburn Literary Executor.

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Robert Philip Bolton

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Robert Philip is an independent New Zealand author. He was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1945. After a career in the advertising business he began freelance writing in 1983 and has been a self-employed writer ever since. Gradually he reduced his commercial writing to dedicate himself to his own writing, preferring to write and publish his own work which is mostly (but not only) about New Zealand and New Zealanders. He has travelled extensively throughout New Zealand, Australia, Britain (where he lived and worked), Europe, Asia and Japan, as well as the United States (where he worked in advertising). He says he loves all good writing from all eras. His other interests lie firmly in the arts: art, music, opera, ballet and the theatre. He plays the saxophone and the ukulele. On the other hand he also loves rugby league and has supported the Warriors since their foundation in 1995. He lives with his wife, who is also a writer, in Greenlane, Auckland. Robert welcomes comments and feedback and is happy to answer questions from readers and to speak about his writing and his books to schools, book clubs and writing groups within a convenient reach of Auckland.

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Jude Knight

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My goal is to give you stories to transport you to another time, another place, where you can enjoy adventure and romance, thrill to trials and challenges, uncover secrets and solve mysteries, and delight in a happy ending. I’ve been telling stories all my life: making up serial tales to amuse my friends and children, imagining sequels to books that have moved me and left me wanting more, occasionally submitting short stories to magazines and the radio, starting more than a dozen novels set in different times and places. I have devoted most of the last forty years to a career in commercial writing and raising a large family (most recently as grandmother-in-residence while a daughter was out of action for three years). Me and my own personal romantic hero, with whom I have shared those forty+ years, now live with two cats and frequent visitors in a small town in rural New Zealand. I wrote and published my first historical romance in 2014, and now have the wind in my sails and a head full of strong determined heroines, heroes with the sense to appreciate them, and villains you’ll love to loathe.

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Michael Riddell

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Mike Riddell is a wordsmith and raconteur. Screenwriter, novelist, playwright and poet, Mike mines the vaults of the psyche in search of stories which are capable of helping us embrace our humanity. From deep in the heart of New Zealand he lives and writes and dreams in glorious obscurity, inspired by the wonderland which surrounds him.

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Tom Beauford

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John Sligo

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Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, John Sligo attended Otago University before going on to study at Cambridge University.  After University he worked for the United Nations, and more recently has worked as a film and television journalist, and is a freelance writer.  Sligo now lives in Sydney.

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Mike Ponder

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Mike Ponder, a NZ author and painter, now living in Queensland Australia, has had a varied career. During his quarter century of professional painting he has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and internationally and produced two books of his works. Forestry, wine and olive oil have also played an important role in Mike's career. He has forestry interests in the Marlborough Sounds and in 1987 Mike and his wife Di purchased some land on the outskirts of Blenheim and planted their first olives and grapes the following year. When Ponder Estate was sold in 2002 they had a national and international reputation for their wines, and were known as pioneers in the development of the olive oil industry in NZ. And now Mike has turned his hand to fiction writing and Random House Australia is proudly publishing his foray into thriller writing.

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Gary Paul Stephenson

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Gary has always had a love of the environment learning how to grow plants and vegetables organically from a very young age under the tutelage of his father's gardener. Being bought up around family dogs and his own pet Dutch rabbit engendered an ongoing love of animals.  The turbulent British political scene during the 1980's saw his interest rise in politics. During these early years, he started to write his first novel and many poems.  Pressures of work, a growing family and increased worldwide travel for international companies saw his writing put aside, time at home spent with family and long country walks with wife and Border collie.   A holiday to see the land of his father led the family to take up permanent residence in New Zealand. Following the life-changing diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, Gary once again took to writing as a way of keeping his mind active and undertook a creative writing course to hone his skills which he passed with distinction.  With his love of the environment and interest in the short term view of politicians, The Charles Langham Series was born. Gary is a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors.

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A.L. Neville

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In a previous life Ann Neville was a nurse, and a secondary school music and mathematics teacher. As a writer, most of her work has been non-fiction. However, in 2011, she completed a course in creative writing with Mandy Hager through Whitireia Polytechnic. The resultant book was short-listed for the Tom Fitzgibbon Award.

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Derek Hansen

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Derek Hansen was born in England and at the age of four convinced his parents to emigrate to New Zealand.  His writing talent took him back to London in the sixties where he rose through the ranks of one of the city's top advertising agencies.  Lured to Australia, Derek spent the next 25 years making ads while wishing he was writing novels.  His Lunch with the Generals was a bestseller, followed by Lunch with Mussolini, Sole Survivor and many others.

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Paul Cleave

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Paul lives in the city where all of his novels are set – Christchurch, New Zealand. For as long as he can remember Paul has always wanted to be a writer. His short stories written at school always concerned his teachers, and his High School report card stated there was a time and a place for his kind of writing – and school wasn’t it. At nineteen, Paul began work on his first few novels will never be allowed out of the bottom drawer.

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Ken Catran

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CATRAN, Ken (1944 - ) is a children's writer and scriptwriter who has written for some of New Zealand's best-loved television series including "Close to Home" and "Shortland Street".

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Steve Malley

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Tattooed, pierced and dreadlocked, Steve Malley is a writer, graphic novelist and professional artist. He is an American expatriate currently living in New Zealand and, once upon a time, a bit of a scrapper...

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Richard Newsome

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Richard Newsome was born in the small New Zealand river town of Wanganui.  Sensing there was no future for him there, he migrated with his family to Australia at the age of two.  His first job after leaving school was as a cadet journalist on the local newspaper where he honed his craft by chasing ambulances and police cars around the streets of the Gold Coast.  After stints on other newspapers and in radio and television with the ABC, he undertook university studies and graduated in economics at the University of Queensland. Richard started work with an international strategy consultancy in Boston, where he learned that it was possible to work for 20 hours days on a regular basis.  He returned to Australia and took up a position with a multinational media company in Sydney. Several promotions later, he was in the head office, overseeing corporate affairs and communications.  This gave him the chance to observe several real-life billionaires at close quarters and he grew to understand their entertainingly obsessive ways. After several years in this environment, Richard took the decision to step off the corporate hurdy-gurdy and take on the role of stay-at-home Dad to help raise his three children aged 14, 11 and 4.  Whilst still working part time and making school lunches, he found time to write The Billionaire's Curse again discovering that it is possible to work 20 hour days on a regular basis.

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Lucy Sussex

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Lucy Sussex was born in New Zealand in 1957. She has degrees in English and Librarianship from Monash University, and is a freelance researcher, editor and writer. She has published widely, writing anything from literary criticism to horror and detective stories. In addition she is a literary archaeologist, rediscovering and republishing the nineteenth-century Australian crime writers Mary Fortune and Ellen Davitt. Her short story, `My Lady Tongue' won a Ditmar (Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award) in 1988. In 1994 she was a judge for the international Tiptree award, which honours speculative fiction exploring notions of gender. Her first adult novel, The Scarlet Rider, is about biography, Victorian detective fiction, voodoo and a ghost.

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Paddy Richardson

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Paddy Richardson has written two collections of short stories, Choices and If We Were Lebanese, many of which have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand.  Her work has been highly commended in the Katherine Mansfield and Sunday Star-Times Awards and her previous novel, The Company of a Daughter, was written during her year as the Burns Fellow in 1997.  Paddy lives in Dunedin where she writes and teaches part-time courses in creative writing.

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John Sligo

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Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, John Sligo attended Otago University before going on to study at Cambridge University.  After University he worked for the United Nations, and more recently has worked as a film and television journalist, and is a freelance writer.  Sligo now lives in Sydney.

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Jim Mason

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Born, Auckland New Zealand, 1929. Resident and citizen of Australia. Author of : Advertising Without Tears; Money For Jam; business books: It Could Be Verse; humorous verse, published  Australia. The Mouse Is Dead; fiction; From Bad To Verse; humorous verse published in NZ   

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Chris Niles

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Chris Niles was born in New Zealand and has worked as a TV and radio journalist in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Europe. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

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Laurie Mantell

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Laurie Mantell is described by the Oxford History of New Zealand literature as one of the most distinguished crime writers in the past twenty years. Her previous books, all published by Victor Gollancz (London), are Murder in Fancy Dress, A Murder or Three, Murder and Chips, Murder to Burn, and Murder in Vain. She lives in Wainuiomata, Wellington. Mates is Laurie Mantell's sixth published crime novel.

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Sandy McCutcheon

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Sandy McCutcheon (born 1947) is a prominent Australian author, playwright, actor, journalist and broadcaster. Sandy McCutcheon was born in Christchurch, New Zealand which, however, he did not discover until he was over fifty years old. He was adopted at a very young age and spent several years looking for traces of his family around Europe, before finding relatives living in New Zealand. Incidentally, his adoption papers, uncovered in 1997, stated that he was born with the name Brian David Parry. He moved to Australia in 1970 and now lives in Brisbane. He spends time each year in the city of Fes in Morocco where he owns a house with his wife the photographer Suzanna Clarke.

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Paul Little

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Paul Little lives in Auckland, New Zealand. He has written for radio and television and has been chief sub-editor of the Australian Women's Weekly, and editor of Metro and the New Zealand Listener. He was named Editorial Writer of the year in 1995 and was a finalist in 1996 and 1997.

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Paul Thomas

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Paul Thomas was born in the UK and grew up in New Zealand. He graduated from the University of Auckland and subsequently worked in journalism and public relations in Auckland, London, Toulouse and Sydney. He won the Australian Ned Kelly Award for his first book, Dirty Laundry. All of his books have been published internationally to widespread critical acclaim and commercial success. A full time writer, Paul has also worked in newspapers and advertising. He lives in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia with his journalist wife.

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David Frame

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David completed an M.Sc. in Astronomy in 1993. His thesis was entitled A photometric and spectroscopic analysis of the southern extremely hydrogen deficient binary stars . He then completed a Ph.D. in Atmospheric, Ionospheric and Space Physics here at Canterbury, still within the department, and went to work for the Treasury for two years. He is now Project Manager for climateprediction.net at the University of Oxford in the UK. He is the author of the satirical novel Light Speed.

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Dorothy Eden

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Dorothy Enid Eden (1912-1982) grew up on an isolated farm in New Zealand's South Island. She worked for some years as a legal secretary, but always wanted to be a writer. She wrote children's stories for a local farming publication and at age 21 published her first story for adults. These early writings were published under the name of Ena Eden. Her first book was published in 1940. She travelled extensively after the war, settling in London in the early 1950s, eventually becoming a full time writer. Eden's books have included family sagas, thrillers, gothic fiction and historical novels. By 1980 she was among the ten best-selling authors in the world, and was translated into many other languages. At least one book, ''Crow Hollow'', was filmed.

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Steven Eldred-Grigg

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ELDRED-GRIGG, Steven (1952- ), is a social historian, fiction writer and autobiographer. His father came from a wealthy Canterbury sheep-farming family; his mother from a poor working-class family in south Christchurch. He was born in the Grey Valley but raised in prosperous suburban Christchurch. He attended Shirley BHS, Canterbury University (MA in history, 1975) and the Australian National University (PhD in history, 1978). Since then he has been a full-time writer based in Christchurch. Born on the back seat of a speeding taxi, the young writer grew up in suburban Christchurch. After graduating with a doctorate in history from the Australian National University the writer first became known as the author of A Southern Gentry, a book which has now sold more copies than almost any other history published in New Zealand. Quick, vivid, democratic - it leads the reader onto his other lively works of New Zealand history: A New History of Canterbury, Pleasures of the Flesh, Working People and The Rich.

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Nigel Latta

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Nigel Latta is a New Zealand psychologist. He is also the host of the television show Beyond The Darklands, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers and The Politically Incorrect Parenting Show. Born in Oamaru to a family of four, Latta studied at the University of Otago. He received a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and a Master of Science in Marine Science. In 1990 he joined the rock group Gavin Thornton’s Steam Injected Band. He toured around the South Island with them until 1991. After that he studied clinical psychology at the University of Auckland. Latta has also written several books dealing with helping families. Some of the titles include; the bestselling Into the Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Amongst Us, Before Your Teenagers Drive You Crazy, Read This!: Battlefield Wisdom for Stressed-Out Parents, Raising Teenagers: A Practical Guide for Parents, and Mothers Raising Sons among others. He has also written a fictional crime thriller, Execution Lullaby (published 2000), which focused on a death row prisoner recounting his life and actions that got him to that point.

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Jill Marshall

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Jill Marshall moved from the United Kingdom to New Zealand, along with her small daughter and her even smaller mad dog.  Her childhood ambition was to become an author, so in 2001 Jill gave up her career as a training director at a huge international company to concentrate on writing and being a mum. Jill plays guitar, takes singing lessons and is learning to play the drum kit she has set up in the garage.  One day she might even sing in a band again...

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Keith Bulfin

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Keith Bulfin is a New Zealander, born in 1946. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland with a Double Major in Economics in 1983. He worked in the finance industry in South Africa and the UK, and for the University of Papua New Guinea as an administrator and lecturer in Accounting. Working in the Australian investment banking industry as a share and mortgage broker in the 1980s, he pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to defraud over the valuations of Lasseters Casino and Dreamworld. Keith spent three years in a Supermax prison, where he was introduced by prison authorities to two Mexican fugitives. It was his friendship with them that led to his recruitment by the US Department of Justice to operate a covert banking operation in Mexico for the Mexico drug cartels. He was reassigned to Washington DC and the FBI to operate a covert bank, targeting Middle Eastern countries and terrorist organisations. He has worked as an expert advisor on money laundering with the National Security Council in Mexico, various foreign governments, policing agencies and multinational companies.

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Vonnie Hughes

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Our family were all born in New Zealand and now live in Queensland, the sunshine state of Australia. Nobody else in my family writes, but in the latter part of the 19th century my antecedents published newspapers and were authors. Blood will out, as they say. I've always written - poetry and short stories as a child; then later on in life as our kids grew older I began writing novels, probably to counteract the stultifying boredom of being a legal executive.

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Jack Eden

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The novel Furt Bent from Aldaheit was inspired by events in 1971 when, at age 19, the author founded a newspaper in a country town near Auckland. He published a story on the innocence of a farmer found guilty of a double murder, and was visited by investigating officers for whom the story was an embarrassment. Eden left the town, and his newspaper, and headed north to the Hokianga where he met several Vietnam War draft dodgers (subject of new novel Jetsam's Caress). He continued in journalism, working on several community and daily newspapers in New Zealand and Australia. He started writing novels seriously in 2005, and has completed seven, two of which have been published. "Memories of the events surrounding those early days of writing about Arthur Alan Thomas stayed with me. Furt Bent from Aldaheit is a work of fiction, but it is fair to say it is inspired those events."

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Vicki Tyley

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Based in rural Victoria, Australia, Vicki writes fast-paced mystery and suspense novels in contemporary Australian settings. Originally from New Zealand, she immigrated with her husband to Australia in 1982. She has travelled extensively, spending a year touring the world before terrorism was an influencing factor. She has lived in the central business districts of large cities, suburbia, idyllic seaside locations, rural areas, bushland, and remote desert mining camps. In the lead up to her writing career, Vicki worked in a multitude of different industries including banking, stockbroking, importing and wholesaling, human resources, mining, hospitality, civil engineering, and toys, in predominantly accounting, IT and management roles. All these life experiences are brought to bear in her writing.

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Joan Druett

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Back in the year 1984, on the picture-poster tropical island of Rarotonga, I literally fell into whaling history when I tumbled into a grave. A great tree had been felled by a recent hurricane, exposing a gravestone that had been hidden for more than one and a half centuries. It was the memorial to a young whaling wife, who had sailed with her husband on the New Bedford ship Harrison in the year 1845. And so my fascination with maritime history was triggered ... resulting in 18 books (so far). The latest -- number nineteen -- is a biography of a truly extraordinary man, Tupaia, star navigator and creator of amazing art.

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Alan Duff

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Alan Duff was born in Rotorua in 1950. He has written novels, including Once Were Warriors, One Night Out Stealing, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, Both Sides of the Moon, Szabad, Jake's Long Shadow, Dreamboat Dad and Who Sings for Lu?, the novella State Ward, several children's books and a number of non-fiction works. Once Were Warriors won the Pen Best First Book of Fiction Award and, as well, as What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, was made into an internationally acclaimed film. Duff was the driving force behind the Books in Homes scheme, which aims to break the cycle of illiteracy, poverty, anger and violence among underprivileged children by providing books for them to own.

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Grant Nicol

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Grant was born and raised in New Zealand and has also lived in Australia and more recently, Northern Ireland. He first visited Reykjavík in 2009 and after six visits in the space of five years he has finally decided to make the city his home.

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Stephen Childs

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Born in Ealing, West London, Stephen Childs immigrated with his family to New Zealand in the 1970s. He has enjoyed a long career in the film and television industry. After a serious health scare in 2005, Childs’ view of life changed. He briefly went into politics as a parliamentary candidate in the national elections, standing against the now New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key.  The drive to pursue new challenges prompted Childs to relocate to Western Australia, where he now lives in Joondalup, north of Perth, with his family and two cats. In his spare time, Childs enjoys exploring the great Australian outdoors and studying genealogy.

Michelle Somers

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Michelle Somers is a bookworm from way back. An ex-Kiwi who now calls Australia home, she's a professional ‘killer and matchmaker', a storyteller and a romantic. Words are her power and her passion. Her heroes and heroines always get their happy ever after, but she'll put them through one hell of a journey to get there. Michelle lives in Melbourne, Australia with her real life hero and three little heroes in the making. Her first book, Lethal in Love, is due for release in 2015. She loves hearing from her readers, so please visit her website www.michelle-somers.com, or chat with her on twitter, Facebook or Google+.

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Geoff Palmer

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Geoff Palmer is the author of five novels, including the acclaimed young-adult adventure/sci-fi book Too Many Zeros, originally published by Penguin, and the award-winning Telling Stories, winner of the Reed/North & South Fiction Award.

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Penelope Haines

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Penelope Haines became a writer when she realized she could gaze out of the window with a glass of wine in her hands and claim to be working.  Her previous occupations of Nurse, Management Consultant, Parent, Farm Manager, CEO and Commercial Pilot failed to achieve this simple clarity. Her training as a nurse taught her not to kill patients; her training as a flying instructor convinced her to be patient as students attempted to kill her. Penelope’s current status as ‘alive’ is a testament to the speed of her reactions.  Writing detective novels allows her to explore new and creative ways of murdering those who have offended her. So far the results of that exploration have remained purely fantastical. Penelope's interests are centered round reading, writing, music, theatre and horse-riding. She maintains she is a single minded person, having one dog, one cat, one horse and one husband.

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David Bates

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The Royal New Zealand Navy as a young seaman preceded an early career in the New Zealand Police Force. He married, there were children while he studied for his law degree. Over the ensuing years he rose to Inspector level, the last six as a Legal Adviser at Police National Headquarters. In 1981 David Bates resigned to practice in criminal law. In 1989, the Government appointed him District Inspector for Mental Health, a position he continued in conjunction with his legal practice for some years. He has since practised as a barrister-sole, specialising in criminal, traffic, youth and mental health law.

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Christopher Abbey

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Christopher Abbey was born in South Africa and, in 1977, immigrated with his family to New Zealand. A Quantity Surveyor by profession, he counteracted the predominance of numbers in his life by writing as a hobby. A creative writing course in 1996 inspired A Moment’s Silence. He has lived in Palmerston North since 1978. 

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Jonothan Cullinane

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Jonothan Cullinane was born in Palmerston North in 1951. Having established his proletarian bona fides as a roughneck on oil rigs in Canada and the North Sea and as a proofreader and bartender in New York City during the 1970s, he began working in the New Zealand film industry in 1981. In 2007 he wrote and directed We're Here to Help, about the Christchurch businessman Dave Henderson's titanic run-in with the IRD. The unprecedented success of that film led to a job as a postie in Mt Roskill, Auckland, a position he still holds.

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Mark McGinn

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Mark McGinn lives in Christchurch, NZ with his family. When he's not writing crime novels, he's enjoying sport, reading other crime writers and, with U2 in his ear, trying to minimise the excesses of red wine and chocolate on an exercycle that looks like a dark age instrument of torture. Now writing his fifth novel, he has previously written two Sasha Stace legal thrillers, a third is with his editor and a mystery. A short story, Perfect Cover, has been published by Fairfax Media.  During a lengthy career in the NZ court system, Mark had the privilege of seeing some of the finest lawyers and judges in action in many notable criminal jury trials. That experience and his subsequent background in psychological assessment has enriched and driven his crime writing.

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Janet Frame

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The fate befalling the young woman who wanted "to be a poet" has been well documented. Desperately unhappy because of family tragedies and finding herself trapped in the wrong vocation (as a schoolteacher) her only escape appeared to be in submission to society's judgement of her as abnormal. She spent four and a half years out of eight years, incarcerated in mental hospitals. The story of her almost miraculous survival of the horrors and brutalising treatment in unenlightened institutions has become well known. She continued to write throughout her troubled years, and her first book (The Lagoon and Other Stories) won a prestigious literary prize, thus convincing her doctors not to carry out a planned lobotomy.
 

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Maurice Shadbolt

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Maurice Shadbolt was a major New Zealand fiction writer and playwright. He published numerous novels and collections of short fiction, as well as novellas, non-fiction, and a play. His writing often drew on his own family history. Shadbolt won several fellowships and almost every major literary prize, some more than once. He was capped Honorary Doctor of Literature by the University of Auckland in 1997.

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Michael Laws

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Michael was raised and educated in Wanganui. He attended Tawhero, Wanganui Intermediate and Wanganui Boys College before a stint at Whakatu freezing works and then on to Otago University. Graduated with a First Class Honours degree from Otago and a UGC Postgraduate Scholarship. Would later graduate Master of Arts from Victoria University, completing the Bill Manhire Masters writing course (2000). Worked as a university tutor (Otago) and parliamentary researcher (1985-89) before serving two terms as National MP for Hawke's Bay (1990-96). Resigned from Parliament April 1996 but returned to be campaign director for NZ First's 1996 campaign that delivered that party the balance of power. Retired from all politics at end of that campaign. Worked as a political consultant/public relations (1997).

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Margaret Mahy

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Margaret Mahy ONZ (born in Whakatane, New Zealand on 21 March 1936) is a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. While the plots of many of her books have strong supernatural elements, her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up.

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Ian Austin

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Ian Austin was born in 1963 in Southampton, England. His very un-remarkable school life ended at 16. Drifting into and out of several jobs including hotel porter and photocopier salesman he eventually found his salvation in the Hampshire Police. A career as first a constable and then detective in the UK followed, where he also served as a tactical firearms officer, covert surveillance operative and National Crime Squad trainer.  He transferred to the New Zealand Police in 2003 having visited several times before and falling in love with the country and the Kiwi way of life.  He left the police in 2006 to set up a training and consultancy business. He now lives in Auckland with his artist partner Sallie. 

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Julie Parsons

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Julie Parsons was born in New Zealand but has lived most of her adult life in Ireland. She has tried her hand at artist's model, typesetter, freelance journalist, radio and television producer - before turning to writing fiction. She lives outside Dublin, by the sea, with her family.

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Yvonne Eve Walus

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Yvonne Eve Walus lives and writes in Aukland, New Zealand. She's a Doctor of Mathematics, wife, mother, and full member of Crime Writers' Association. Her books include Murder @ Work, Nowhen, Neverwhen, and Southern Skies.

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Katherine Dewar

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A seventies child and eighties teen, author Katherine Dewar was raised in North Yorkshire in a house filled with books, computers and animals. She studied politics and worked in Leeds before emigrating to Aotearoa NZ, where she founded a marketing business, GoodSense, to help worthwhile companies and volunteers with the Green Party. Katherine has made up stories for as long as she can remember, exploiting plastic animals as characters before she could wield a pen. Her early writing was encouraged by school clubs, the Arvon Foundation and her endlessly supportive parents. She credits Dame Fiona Kidman’s creative writing course, her local writers’ group and the discipline of crafting client soundbites for getting her writing to a standard to unleash on the world. Katherine loves long walks, loud music, wild places and good books.

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Debra Daley

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Debra Daley was born in New Zealand and grew up in west Auckland in a family of Irish extraction. After graduating from the University of Auckland she was employed as a journalist and editor in London and then in Sydney. She also worked as a screenwriter and as a public health journalist in Auckland, while raising two sons. She subsequently lived in Ibiza, and London again, where she wrote her first historical novel, Turning the Stones. She now lives in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.

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Christina Alexander

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Christina Alexander was born in the bitterly cold sheep and lake country of the far south of New Zealand, and trained as a teacher in Dunedin. She taught infants in the area before moving to Australia and studying journalism, English, psychology, and remedial education at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

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Ronald Hugh Morrieson

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James Ronald Hugh Morrieson died at 50, a sad and disappointed man. His remark, ‘I hope I’m not another one of these poor buggers who get discovered when they’re dead’ became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Morrieson was born on 29 January 1922 and lived his entire life in the house built by his grandfather at the corner of Regent Street and South Road, Hawera. A novelist and short story writer in the New Zealand vernacular, who was little known in his home country until after his death. He earned his living as a musician and music teacher, and played in dance bands throughout south Taranaki. Morrieson lived in the Taranaki town of Hawera all his life and this town appears (under other names) in his novels.

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