List of Mentors for NZSA Mentor Programme
Harriet Allan
Area: Auckland
Genre: adult fiction (all genres except adult fantasy and sci-fi), young adult fiction and general nonfiction
Website: https://authors.org.nz/author/harriet-allan/
After starting with a medical publisher and then Oxford University Press, Harriet Allan worked at Penguin Random House and its earlier iterations for nearly 35 years. She edited and produced books of all genres for both adults, young adults and children before becoming fiction publisher, in which role she published numerous award-winning novels and literary nonfiction titles, working with some of New Zealand’s preeminent writers. She is currently working as a freelance manuscript assessor, mentor and editor.
Diane Brown
Area: Dunedin
Genre: Poetry, Hybrid, Memoir, Fiction
Website: https://dianebrown.nz
Diane Brown is a novelist, memoirist, and poet who runs an online and face-to-face creative writing school, Creative Writing Dunedin, teaching fiction, memoir and poetry. She has been teaching and mentoring writers throughout NZ for over thirty years. She has published eight books: two collections of poetry – Before The Divorce We Go To Disneyland, (Tandem Press 1997) and Learning to Lie Together, ( Godwit, 2004); two novels, If The Tongue Fits, (Tandem Press, 1999) and Eight Stages of Grace, (Vintage, 2002) – a verse novel which was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards 2003. Also, a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers (Vintage, 2004); and a prose/poetic travel memoir; Here Comes Another Vital Moment (Godwit, 2006), a poetic memoir, Taking My Mother To The Opera, Otago University Press (2015) and a poetic novella, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child, Otago University Press (2020).
She straddles the line between prose and poetry and between fiction and non/fiction and is waiting publication of a hybrid work called Growing Up Late. She has held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and has had two residencies at the Michael King Writer’s Studio, in 2005 and 2019. She won the Janet Frame Memorial Award in 2012 and the Beatson Fellowship in 2013. In 2013 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to writing and education. She lives in Dunedin with her husband, author Philip Temple.
Shelley Burne-Field
Area: Hawke’s Bay
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction. Adult Fiction including short stories, novel, flash fiction. Adult Creative non-fiction. Poetry
Website
Shelley writes across genres and generations. Her middle grade novels for children have been widely reviewed and taught in primary schools. Her award winning adult short stories ask hard questions about major topics in Aotearoa NZ and around the world. Shelley also dabbles in poetry and won the inaugural Pikihuia poetry award in English and the current award. She believes that in her 50s, she’s finally found the flow of her life. Her writing is an expression of love and passion for stories, helping people, and living a peaceful life.
Majella Cullinane
Area: Port Chalmers
Genre: Fiction, especially the short story, essays/memoir and poetry
Dr Majella Cullinane writes poetry, fiction, and essays. Originally from Ireland, she has lived in New Zealand since 2008, and Ōtepoti Dunedin since 2014. Her second collection Whisper of a Crow’s Wing, Otago University Press and Salmon Poetry, Ireland, and her most recent, Meantime, Otago University Press, were chosen as The New Zealand Listener’s Top Poetry Books in 2018 and 2024.
Grants and writing awards include: a Copyright Licensing New Zealand Grant, a Creative New Zealand Arts Grant, and an Irish Arts Council Grant to attend St Andrews University, Scotland, an Auckland Museum Research Grant, The Hennessy/XO Irish Times Literary Award for Emerging Poetry, The Sean Dunne Young Writers’ Award, and The Caselberg International Poetry Prize. She was Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago in 2014. Her debut novel, The Life of De’Ath was shortlisted for the NZSA Heritage Fiction Prize, and the 2016 Dundee International Book Prize, and longlisted for the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Her writing has been published internationally, and she has held residencies and fellowships in Ireland, Scotland, and New Zealand. In 2020, she was the first to graduate with a PhD in Creative Practice from the Centre of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Otago. Her first short story collection will be published in 2026. In September 2025, she was a fellow at the Hawthornden Castle Literary Retreat in Edinburgh. She lives in Kōpūtai, Port Chalmers with her family.
Chris Else
Area: Dunedin
Genre: Fiction and non-fiction for adults and fiction for young adults
Website: www.elseware.co.nz
Writer and reviewer with seven novels and two collections of short-stories commercially published. Over thirty years experience in the New Zealand book trade as bookseller, publisher’s rep, publishing consultant and literary agent. Former president of NZSA and President of Honour 2018-2019
Bronwyn Elsmore
Area: Auckland
Genre: Adult and children’s fiction, short story, non-fiction, plays
Website: www.flaxroots.com
Bronwyn is a multi-award and prize-winning writer of short stories, books, plays and articles. She is the author of 12 books and has seen many of her short stories published in a variety of publications, as well as producing her own collection. She has had numerous plays produced and has also authored work for academic publications. Throughout her writing career she has been an advertising copywriter, freelancer, contract writer, editor, education writer, playwright, writing mentor and tutor, competition judge, and an academic writer during her years as an academic. She now prefers to write fiction – novels, short stories and plays.
Michelle Elvy
Area: Dunedin
Genre: Fiction (novel, short story, flash fiction); hybrid (fiction / creative nonfiction / poetry); creative nonfiction & travel; memoir and nonfiction (historical writing, essays); humour; introduction to poetry (new poetry); YA.
Website: https://michelleelvy.com/
Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and teacher of creative writing in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her poetry, fiction, travel writing, creative nonfiction and reviews have been widely published and anthologised. Her books include ‘the everrumble’ and ‘the other side of better’, and her extensive anthology work includes, in 2025, ‘Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages’ (The Cuba Press) and ‘Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero | Short! The big book of small stories’ (MUP), plus ‘A Kind of Shelter: Whakaruru-taha’ (MUP 2023), ‘Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand’ (OUP 2020) and ‘Bonsai: Best Small Stories of Aotearoa NZ’ (CUP 2018) among others. She is Managing Editor of the international ‘Best Small Fictions’ series and has been Reviews Editor at Landfall and takahē.
Once upon a time Michelle was a historian specialising in German History. A Fulbright scholar and Watson Fellow, she is also a three-time Pushcart nominee and recipient of the NZSA / Auckland Museum Library grant and the NZSA Mentorship programme award. In 2025, she is the recipient of two writing residencies, the Riddell Residency and the Auckland Regional Parks Residency, Also in 2025, her poetry collection was shortlisted in the Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry, and her creative nonfiction proposal was highly commended in the 2025 CLNZ | NZSA Writers’ Award. In 2024 she won the IWW Short Story Prize and was runner up in the IWW Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of poems (also Highly Commended for a sequence in 2023). She has been shortlisted in the Grimshaw Sargeson Award and the Top of the South Short Story Award and twice shortlisted in the Sargeson Short Story Prize. Michelle has adjudicated various competitions in Aotearoa and abroad, including the South Island Writers’ Association, the Whangārei Poetry Walk, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the 2021 and 2022 Bath Novella-in-Flash Award and the 2024 Fish Flash Fiction Prize. Michelle is founder of National Flash Fiction Day NZ and Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, and she edits at AT THE BAY | I TE KOKORU. She teaches creative writing online at 52|250 A Year of Writing (https://52250course.com/).
Siobhan Harvey
Area: Auckland
Genre: Creative nonfiction, memoir, fiction and poetry
Siobhan Harvey is the author of creative nonfiction, memoir, fiction and poetry. Her nine books include the memoir, What We Remember, What We Forget (forthcoming, 2026) and the 2021 New Zealand Book Awards long-listed, Ghosts (Otago University Press, 2021). She was a category winner in the 2025 Memoir Book Awards (US) Highly-Commended in 2024 Bridport Memoir Award (UK), won 2023 Landfall Essay Prize and was shortlisted in 2023 takahe Monica Taylor Poetry Competition. Additionally, she was awarded 2021 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry, 2020 New Zealand Society of Authors Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship, 2020 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, 2019 Robert Burns Poetry Prize, 2016 Write Well Award (Fiction, US), and 2013 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award. Her previous books include Cloudboy (Otago University Press, 2014 and, as co-editor, Essential New Zealand Poems (Random House, 2014). Her work has been selected three time for Best New Zealand Poems and she’s been a three time runner up in the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition. The Poetry Archive UK holds a Poet’s Page of her work.
Emma Hislop
Area: New Plymouth
Genre: fiction
Emma Hislop (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha she/her/ia) is a writer living and working in Taranaki. Her debut short story collection, titled Ruin, was published in March 2023, with Te Herenga Waka University Press and won the Hubert Church Best First Book of Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, 2024. Her work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas, including Action Spectacle, The Listener, Metro, Newsroom, Sport, Huia, and Takahē. She has a Masters of Creative Writing from the IIML. In 2024 Emma was the recipient of a Springboard Award from the Aotearoa Arts Foundation. She currently works as a researcher for the Māori Literature Trust, mentor for Te Kaituhi Māori and workshop convenor for Faber Academy.
Penelope Jackson
Area: Tauranga
Genre: Creative non-fiction
Penelope Jackson is an art historian, curator and writer. She has a PhD in Creative Arts; her thesis was about researching and writing in the area of art and crime. Aside from numerous articles, book chapters and exhibition catalogues, she has three published books: Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters: The New Zealand Story, Awa Press (2016), Females in the Frame: Women, Art, and Crime, Palgrave Macmillan (2019), and The Art of Copying Art, Palgrave Macmillan (2022). The latter was the AAWPA Book of the Year in 2023. Jackson also writes short fiction including One Degree Off: Stories of Singapore, Marshall Cavendish (2024). Her latest book, UNSEEN: Art and Crime in Australia (Monash UP) will be published in December 2025. She is a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
Lynn Jenner
Area: Kerikeri
Genre: creative non fiction, memoir, poetry, hybrid genre works
Email: lynn.jenner2@gmail.com
I have published three books, one of poetry, one of essays, poetry and found text and one of essays and glossaries. I have also taught poetry and creative non-fiction writing at tertiary institutions and in the community. I have had some amazing writing mentors in my writing life. The thing that made each of them amazing was that they could see and feel what I was trying to do in my writing, and they set themselves to helping me get there. It was as if they could see what my work wanted to be, see its possibilities, sometimes before I could see them myself. That’s what I think the job of a mentor is. All my mentors shared what they had learned, whether it was about form and structure or language or even looking after files and versions of my work. But more than that, they shared their excitement about writing, and their warm welcome for me as a writer. It’s really important that a mentor helps you write the work you want to write, and not the work they would write. A mentor is different from a manuscript assessor. A manuscript assessor is more focused on giving the writer feedback about where the writing is working well and where it isn’t. They may also make some suggestions. A mentor has a more collaborative and developmental role.
Stephanie Johnson
Area: Auckland
Genre: Short stories, novels.
I am the author of over twenty books – novels, short story collections, nonfiction and poetry. I have taught creative writing at Auckland, Massey and Waikato universities, AUT and Auckland Prison, and have conducted workshops under the auspices of various literary festivals. I have mentored and assessed many manuscripts and very much enjoy helping writers to progress their work to publisher-ready stage.
Anne Kennedy
Area: Auckland
Genre: Fiction (novels and short form), poetry, particularly narrative poetry, screenplays.
Anne Kennedy is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, screenplay editor and teacher. She has taught creative writing for 30 years in tertiary institutions (University of Hawai`i at Manoa, Manukau Institute of Technology, Massey University), high schools (for Auckland Writers Festival) and community workshops. She is the current editor of AUP New Poets. Awards include the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry, the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry, and the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award.
Caroline Lark
Area: Auckland
Genre: Fiction: novels and short stories. Autofiction. Memoir. Poetry. Radio Drama. Stage plays
Website: www.carolinelark.com
Caroline Lark is a fiction writer, poet and playwright, published in UK, France, NZ and Australia. She was the winner of the Hazard Press/Quote Unquote Fiction Award in 1995 with her novella, Days; her poetry collection, A Messy Affair, was published by Steele Roberts in 2011; three radio plays have been produced by Radio NZ; her latest stage play, Eros, was performed at The Court Theatre in Christchurch in 2010. She was born in London, studied at the University of Cambridge, UK, (Fine Arts, Philosophy, Psychology of Education tripos, BEd Hons) and Anglia Ruskin University, UK, (Postgraduate Diploma English Studies). Her work is collected in the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Poetry Library, London, and on the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. Caroline has taught Creative Writing (Poetry, Fiction, Playwriting, Writing for Radio) at the University of Canterbury, the University of Auckland, Waiheke Island Summer Schools 2013 and 2014 and over the last decade at the University of Otago Summer School. She runs writing courses on Waiheke Island where she lives: Fiction & Memoir 2019; Radio Writing 2019; Fiction, Autofiction & Memoir 2020/21. She provides supervisions and gives tutorials for short story writers, novelists, poets, playwrights, radio writers and memoirists.
Janice Marriott
Area: Auckland
Genre: Children’s novels and picture books, adult novels, and memoir
Website: www.gowritenow.nz
Janice Marriott is a writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction for adult and child readers. Her children’s novels have won the Supreme Award, Senior Fiction Award, the Junior Fiction Award, and been a finalist in the Non-Fiction section of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. She has been awarded the Ester Glen Medal for her children’s writing and the Margaret Mahy Medal in 2018. She’s written children’s material for TV, radio, and the educational market.
For adults she has written four books of memoir, Common Ground being the first, and Changing Lives the most recent. She has been a weekly columnist for the Herald on Sunday, and a gardening columnist for the last nine years. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and on radio. Her most recent book is Grandparents Talk, published in 2016.
Her main focus now is helping others write their stories. She is a member of the NZ Association of Manuscript Assessors, and runs a popular online tutoring business for emerging writers, through www.gowritenow.nz Several of her students have won book awards themselves.
Steph Matuku
Area: New Plymouth
Genre: Childrens/Young Adult. Fantasy/sci-fi
Website: stephmatuku.com
I am an award-winning writer from Taranaki with a particular interest in writing for young people – picture books through to Young Adult. Several of my books were shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and/or listed as Storylines Notable Books.
My screen credits include ‘Mystic’, ‘Shortland Street’, ‘Secrets at Red Rocks’, and ‘Under the Vines’.
I like to give my mentees tips, tricks and motivational hacks to get through those early drafts. I’m a big believer in outlining, planning and story structure, and creating a solid foundation to write entertaining, authentic stories that connect with readers.
Jacquie McRae
Area: Wellsford
Genre: Short stories, Fiction (adults and young adults)
Website: jacquiemcrae.com
Jacquie McRae (Tainui) is included in several short story collections. Her first novel “The Scent of apples” won gold at the Ippy’s and her latest novel “The Liminal space” was a finalist 2021 NZ booklovers awards. She has been a Pikihuia finalist and was mentored on the first Te Papa Tupu programme. She mentors on this same program for the Maori Literature trust.
Kyle Mewburn
Area: Central Otago
Genre: Picture books, general children’s fiction
Website: kylemewburn.com
Kyle Mewburn has published numerous picture books, junior fiction and School Readers. These books have been published in 23 countries and won numerous awards.
Old Hu-hu (Scholastic 2009) won the 2010 NZ Post Children’s Book of the Year. Melu (Scholastic 2012) won the NZ Post Best Picture Book category at the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards in 2013 and was a White Raven title for 2012. Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! (Scholastic 2006) won both the Best Picture Book and Children’s Choice categories at the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards in 2007, as well as the Flicker Tale Award in North Dakota, USA. Kyle’s best-selling junior fiction series Dinosaur Rescue has been sold into over 20 countries. Kyle was Children’s Writer-in-Residence at Otago University in 2011 and was President of the NZSA till 2017. Kyle’s first junior novel, A Crack in the Sky (Scholastic 2010), was written while participating in the NZSA Mentorship programme, under the guidance of David Hill. Her memoir: Faking it. My life in transition, was published by Penguin in 2021.
Judy L Mohr
Area: Christchurch
Genre: Thrillers (including Romantic Suspense), Fantasy (including Paranormal Romance), Science Fiction, Crime
Website: https://judylmohr.com
Kiwi Judy L Mohr is a writer of techno-thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction. She is also a developmental editor and writing coach, working with writers around the world. When she isn’t writing, editing, or doing something within the local writing community, she can often be found with a camera in her hand enjoying the world around her—no doubt scouting for locations to hide the bodies. (Shh… Don’t tell anyone.) Learn more about her various projects on her website (judylmohr.com) or on Bluesky (@judylmohr.com).
Affiliations: Member of NZSA, Sisters in Crime (Guppy chapter), Australian Crime Writers Association, SpecFicNZ Inc., Alliance of Independent Authors, Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA), and co-founder of Canterbury Writers
Paula Morris
Area: Auckland
Genre: fiction and nonfiction
Paula Morris MNZM (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Manuhiri, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning novelist, short story writer and essayist. Director of the Master of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland, she is the founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature; Wharerangi, the Māori literature hub; and the online Aotearoa NZ Review of Books.
James Norcliffe
Area: Church Bay near Christchurch
Genre: Poetry; Writing for young people: junior fiction to young adult; Adult fiction
Website: www.jamesnorcliffe.com
James has had many years’ experience as a writer and editor. He has published ten collections of poetry, most recently Villon in Millerton, Shadow Play, Dark Days at the Oxygen Café, Deadpan and a collection of poems for younger people Packing A Bag for Mars; twelve novels for young people, including the YA fantasy The Loblolly Boy which made the USSBY list of best foreign children’s books published in the USA, its successor The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer, and more recently The Enchanted Flute, Felix and the Red Rats, The Pirates and the Nightmaker, Twice Upon a Time, and the just released Mallory, Mallory: the Revenge of the Tooth Fairy which will be followed by a second Mallory novel next year. Another novel for young people The Crate is also scheduled for 2021.
He has written a collection of short stories, The Chinese Interpreter. A novel for adults The Frog Prince is forthcoming from Penguin Random.
He is an editor for the on-line journal Flash Frontier and has edited anthologies of poetry and the annual ReDraft anthologies of writing by young people. He has co-edited major poetry and short fiction anthologies most recently Bonsai (with Michelle Elvy & Frankie McMillan) and this year’s Ko Aotearoa Tatou: We Are New Zealand with Michelle Elvy & Paula Morris..
He has twice won the NZ Poetry Society’s International Poetry Award, been short listed for the Montana poetry awards for Letters to Dr Dee, and won an honour award for The Emerald Encyclopaedia at the NZ Children’s Book Awards. The Assassin of Gleam was short listed for the Esther Glen Medal, and won the Sir Julius Vogel Award. In 2010 The Loblolly Boy also short listed for the Esther Glen Award and won the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards Junior Fiction Award. The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer, Felix and the Red Rats and The Pirates and the Nightmaker were shortlisted for the NZ Post Children’s Junior Fiction Awards.
James has been invited to a number of international poetry festivals and has been awarded a number of residencies including the Burns Fellowship, the Iowa International Writers Programme, and the University Of Otago College Of Education Creative New Zealand Fellowship for Children’s Writing.
With Bernadette Hall, he was presented with a Press Literary Liaisons Honour Award for lasting contribution to literature in the South Island. His first adult novel The Frog Prince was released by Penguin Random earlier this year and The Crate a ghost story for young adults has just been published by Quentin Wilson Publishing. In 2022 James received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry and in 2023 he was awarded the Margaret Mahy Medal writing for young people.
Mikaela Nyman
Website: ReadNZ ANZ Literarture
Area: Taranaki and Dunedin in 2024
Genre: Fiction / non-fiction / poetry
Mikaela Nyman writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Swedish. She’s also an editor and translator. Her work has been widely anthologised and appeared in World Literature Today, Spinoff, Sport, The Disappointed Housewife, Minarets, Turbine/Kapohau, Strong Words #1 and #2: the best of the Landfall Essay Competition, No Other Place To Stand, and Ko Aotearoa Tātou / We Are New Zealand. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net in the USA. She is the author of two award-winning poetry collections in Swedish. Her first collection in English, The Anatomy of Sand, is forthcoming with Te Herenga Waka Press (THWUP) in May 2025.
Mikaela co-edited Sista, Stanap Strong! (THWUP, 2021) – a ground-breaking anthology of fiction, non-fiction and poetry by three generations of women from Vanuatu. Her climate fiction novel Sado (THWUP, 2020) was set in Vanuatu in the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Pam. Her collaborative poems with writers from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands appear in A Game of Two Halves: The Best of Sport Magazine 2005-2019, the climate change poetry anthology No Other Place To Stand, and Turbine 2024. In 2023 she was the Micro Madness judge and poetry judge for the Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Awards. She was the Writer in Residence for Massey University and Palmerston North City in 2021. In 2024 she was the Robert Burns Fellow at Otago University. She has facilitated creative writing workshops and literary events online, in New Zealand, Finland and Vanuatu, most recently at the 7th Melanesian Arts and Culture Festival in Port Vila in 2023.
Vincent O’Malley
Area: Wellington
Genre: History, non-fiction
Website: meetingplace.nz
Vincent O’Malley is a historian who has written and published extensively on the history of Māori and Pākehā relations in nineteenth century New Zealand.
Born and raised in Christchurch, he moved to Wellington in 1993 on a short-term contract researching Treaty claims and more than 25 years later remains in the capital, working for iwi, the Waitangi Tribunal and other parties in the claims resolution process.
It is through that work that he realised that this rich seam of New Zealand history was virtually unknown outside a relatively small group of claimants, lawyers and Tribunal officials. And so he began to publish some of his own research findings, including his widely-acclaimed and best-selling 2016 work on the Waikato War, which drew in part on earlier research for the Tribunal’s Rohe Pōtae (King Country) inquiry. It was through a similar desire to make this history accessible to a wide audience that he established this blog in 2012.
His books include: Agents of Autonomy: Māori Committees in the Nineteenth Century (Huia, 1998); The Beating Heart: A Political and Socio-Economic History of Te Arawa (Huia, 2008); The Treaty of Waitangi Companion: Māori and Pākehā from Tasman to Today (Auckland University Press, 2010); The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters, 1642-1840 (Auckland University Press, 2012); Beyond the Imperial Frontier: The Contest for Colonial New Zealand (Bridget Williams Books, 2014); Haerenga: Early Māori Journeys Across the Globe (Bridget Williams Books, 2015); The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000 (Bridget Williams Books, 2016); and The New Zealand Wars/Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (Bridget Williams Books, 2019).
He was the 2014 J D Stout Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, where he worked on his new history of the Waikato War (The Great War for New Zealand), and is a founding partner of HistoryWorks, a Wellington-based research consultancy specialising in Treaty of Waitangi research. He holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Canterbury and a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington.
Kiri Piahana-Wong
Area: Auckland
Genre: Poetry
Website: https://www.anahera.co.nz
Kiri Piahana-Wong (Ngāti Ranginui, Chinese, English) is a poet, editor and publisher. She founded Anahera Press in 2011. Anahera’s most recent publication is Standing on my Shadow by Serie Barford; previous authors include Apirana Taylor, Arihia Latham, Ben Brown and Leilani Tamu. As a poet, Kiri’s work has appeared in over forty journals and anthologies, including Essential NZ Poems, Poetry NZ, Landfall, Takahē, Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems, A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, Vā: Stories by Women of the Moana, Koe: An Aotearoa ecopoetry anthology, and internationally in Set Me On Fire: A Poem For Every Feeling (Doubleday, UK). She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Night Swimming (AP, 2013) and Tidelines (AP, 2024). Kiri is the co-editor of Te Awa o Kupu (Penguin NZ, 2023), an anthology of contemporary Māori literature, as well as Short! Poto! The big book of small stories (MUP, 2025), and she was the editor of three editions of the Māori literary journal Ora Nui. Kiri is passionate about poetry, decolonising literature, indigenous voices and breaking down barriers for marginalised writers. She also loves nature writing, food memoirs and romance novels.
Ruby Porter
Area: Auckland
Genre: Fiction, Creative Nonfiction and Poetry
Ruby Porter is a prose-writer, poet and artist. She was the winner of the Wallace Foundation Short Fiction Award in 2017, and the inaugural winner of the Michael Gifkins Prize in 2018, with her debut novel Attraction. Attraction was written during her Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland, published in 2019 by Melbourne-based Text Publishing, and longlisted in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2020. It is distributed throughout Australia, New Zealand and North America. Her poetry, short fiction and nonfiction has been published in Newsroom, Milly Mag, Recess Mag, Geometry Journal, Antithesis Journal, Aotearotica, The Wireless and The Spinoff. A recorded selection of her poetry is available on New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre.
Ruby teaches creative writing at the University of Auckland, The Creative Hub, and in high schools. She has over fifteen years’ experience as a tutor, and has been a writing tutor since 2016.
Vaughan Rapatahana
Area: Mangakino
Genre: short story, poetry, novel, creative non-fiction – in either or both of te reo Ingarihi me te reo Māori.
Website
I am available to assist any mentee wishing to nourish and nurture their creative writing across a number of genre – short story, poetry, novel, creative non-fiction – in either or both of te reo Ingarihi me te reo Māori. To see their development towards garnering a publishable work. I am currently a mentor via Te Kaituhi Māori programme and have enjoyed being involved there. Finally, I am the author and/or co-editor of over 45 books, with more on the way to being published during 2025.
Sue Reidy
Area: Auckland
Genre: Adult fiction (literary, commercial, crime), memoirs, essays
Website
Sue Reidy is an Auckland writer, editor, reviewer, ms assessor, poet, speechwriter. She holds a masters in creative writing from the University of Auckland. She has three novels published internationally and a collection of stories published by Penguin. She is a former Buddle Findlay Sargeson fellow, former winner of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. She was awarded a 2025 Michael King Writers’ Centre residency. She is particularly interested in reading manuscripts with strong POVs, and original voices.
Paddy Richardson
Area: Dunedin
Genre: Short fiction, Crime fiction, Historical fiction, Contemporary fiction
Paddy Richardson is the author of two collections of short stories, Choices and If We Were Lebanese and eight novels, The Company of a Daughter, A Year to Learn a Woman, Hunting Blind, Traces of Red, Cross Fingers, Swimming in the Dark, Through the Lonesome Dark and By the Green of the Spring. She has had her work published overseas; A Year to Learn A Woman (‘Der Frauenfanger’) Hunting Blind (‘Komm Spiel Mit Mir’) and Traces of Red (‘Deine Schuld’) have been published by the German publishers Droemer Knaur and ‘Swimming in the Dark’ has been published by MacMillans, Australia. Hunting Blind, Traces of Red, Cross Fingers and Swimming in the Dark have all been finalists in the Ngaio Marsh Award and Through the Lonesome Dark was shortlisted for the NZ Heritage Book Awards and longlisted for The Dublin Literary Awards.
Paddy has been awarded four Creative New Zealand Awards, the University of Otago Burns Fellowship in 1997, the Beatson Fellowship in 2007, the James Wallace Arts Trust Residency Award in 2011 and the Randell Cottage Residency in 2019. In 2012 she represented New Zealand at both the Leipzig and Frankfurt Book Fairs. She is an experienced awards assessor and competition judge, is an experienced teacher of creative writing, has been a speaker at many writing festivals and is a mentor and assessor for the NZSA Writing Programmes.
Joan Rosier-Jones
Area: Whanganui
Genre: Fiction and Non-Fiction
Joan Rosier-Jones writes fiction and non-fiction. She has also written and had three plays produced. She began her working life as a teacher, and now combines her two passions – writing and teaching by running classes and writers’ retreats for adults and working with the NZA programmes for emerging writers. She has taught creative writing for several institutions – University of Auckland, UNITEC, and local community education services. Several of her students have gained success in the world of publishing. Her popular, So You Want to Write, a guide for aspiring authors, was updated and reprinted in 2018. Other similar subjects include family history writing, book publicity and marketing. She is the author of several courses for the NZ Institute of Business Studies, and has published a number of novels since her first book, Cast Two Shadows, described as a ‘powerfully realistic novel’, was released in 1985. A true murder mystery, The Murder of Chow Yat, was published in 2009. Her last novel, Waiting for Elizabeth, was set in Tudor Ireland. Doing it My Way is an Egyptian memoir, which she co-wrote with Egyptian entrepreneur, Elhamy Elzayat and her latest publication is Literary Whanganui which is based on literary walks and bus tours she has organised over the last 15 years.
Cristina A Schumacher
Area: Hamilton
Genre: Fiction: Flash fiction, Short story, Fantasy, History, Romance. Non-fiction: Self-help, (auto)biography, Memoir, Spirituality and esotericism, Language teaching and learning manuals, Storytelling
Website: cristinaschumacher.com
I have an innate appreciation for the power of stories and how to make them truly compelling. I recognise through my love of words that the ways in which they are used make the difference in creating a good story. I see creative writing as a process and when I provide feedback, I try to make sure that my contribution is both constructive and feasible so that authors feel genuinely motivated to continue improving their work. I am a multilingual writer and a linguist, and I have written poetry and fiction – flash, short, novel – all my life. With my experience of over 40 years of consistent contact with the written word through narratives, translations and language materials that I have produced, edited and proofread, I have developed the capacity to identify and indicate the points for improvement in texts of different kinds. Additionally, my extensive storytelling training under the mentoring of James McSill (www.mcsill.com) has further enabled me to approach a manuscript from a technical point of view and provide feedback towards professional publishing.
Tina Shaw
Area: Taupō
Genre: Fiction, non-fiction, memoir
Website: www.tinashaw.co.nz
Tina Shaw is an editor and author of more than 20 publications for children, young adults and general readership – including The Children’s Pond and Ephemera. She is editor of the Bateman New Zealand Writer’s Handbook, 7th Edition, and is 2023 winner of the Michael Gifkins Prize for an Unpublished Novel with A House Built on Sand, published in September 2024 by Text Publishing, Australia.
Her YA manuscript, Ursa, won the 2018 Storylines Tessa Duder Award and was published in 2019 by Walker Books. Ursa went on to claim a 2020 Storylines Notable Book Award and was a finalist in the 2020 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young People.
Shaw has held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship, the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency, the University of Waikato Writer-In-Residence and a Michael King Trust residency. She is a manuscript assessor, mentor, external examiner for AUT’s Master of Creative Writing, Editor of NZ Author, a publisher with Cloud Ink Press, and has been an NZAMA member for more than 20 years.
Elizabeth Smither
Area: New Plymouth
Genre: I mentor in poetry, short story, journal, novel.
Elizabeth Smither has published 18 collections of poetry, was Te Mata poet laureate (2001-3), and was awarded an HonDLitt by Auckland University and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2008. She also writes novels, journals and short stories, and is widely published in Australia, Britain and USA. Her latest poetry collection, ‘Night Horse’ won the Ockham poetry award 2018. “I like rotating literary genres so I have recently published a collection of short stories, a new collection of poems will be published shortly and I am working on four novellas. Each of these genres fascinates me and each has its own subtle demands and possibilities. Each time I learn something new. It can be fun to teach and explore at the same time”.
Vanda Symon
Area: Otago
Genre: Crime fiction/ general fiction / non-fiction
Website: www.vandasymon.com
Vanda Symon has had four crime fiction novels in the Detective Sam Shepherd series and a stand-alone crime fiction novel, The Faceless, published by Penguin New Zealand. Her novels have also been translated into German and have been published in Britain by Orenda Books. She is a three-time finalist for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel. Overkill was short-listed for the 2019 British CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award, and Bound was a finalist in the 2022 USA Barry Awards.
Vanda is also involved in broadcasting – producing and hosting a monthly radio show on books and writers on Otago Access Radio, and has reviewed books for National Radio. She has been a judge for the New Zealand Book Awards and the Ngaio Marsh Awards for Best Crime Novel. This has given her experience in critiquing both fiction and non-fiction work. Vanda has a PhD in science communication, and a professional background in Pharmacy. She works as a Research Fellow undertaking Pacific Health research at Va’a o Tautai – Centre for Pacific Health at the University of Otago. Vanda is a Fijian New Zealander.
Emma Timpany
Area: England, UK
Genre: Literary and general fiction: short story, novel/novella and memoir/life writing
Website: https://emmatimpany.wordpress.com/
Emma was born and grew up near Ōtepoti Dunedin. Since graduating from the University of Otago in 1992, she has lived in England but returns regularly to southern Aotearoa New Zealand.
Emma’s publications include the short story collections Three Roads and The Lost of Syros, and the novella Travelling in the Dark. Her writing has received awards including the Society of Authors’ Tom-Gallon Trust Award and the Hall and Woodhouse DLF Writing Prize. Since 2010, many of her short stories, articles and poems have been published in literary journals worldwide. She is co-editor and editor respectively of the short story anthologies Cornish Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary Cornish Writing (2018) and Botanical Short Stories: Contemporary Writing about Plants and Flowers (2024).
In recent years, Emma has worked as a tutor and mentor for Literature Works, the Arts Council England regional literature development agency for South West England. From 2019-2023, she ghostwrote numerous memoirs for a private autobiography company. She enjoys helping and encouraging writers across a range of genres to develop their works-in-progress by tailoring her mentoring to the unique needs of each writer’s project.
Geoff Walker
Area: Auckland
Genre: General non-fiction.Particularly history, biography, memoir. I’m no longer available to review fiction.
I’m a former publishing director of Penguin New Zealand, where I worked with many leading authors such as Michael King, Anne Salmond, Patricia Grace and Lloyd Jones. I’m now working as a freelance editor. I specialise in history, biography and memoir but I also enjoy working with authors of general non-fiction.
Philippa Werry
Area: Wellington
Genre: Fiction and non fiction (both adult and children’s/YA, but not picture books)
Website: www.philippawerry.co.nz
Philippa is a Wellington writer whose non-fiction, poetry, stories and plays have been widely published, anthologised and broadcast on radio. Her books have been shortlisted for the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in four categories: picture book, junior fiction, young adult fiction and non-fiction. Her verse novel Iris and me was the winner, young adult section of the NZCYA Book Awards 2023 and was longlisted for 2023 ARA Historical Novel Prize and named in the IBBY Honour List 2024. Eleven of her books have been named as Storylines Notable Books. Her work has also appeared in the School Journal, Ready to Read series, Readers’ Theater and many other educational publications.
Philippa was runner up in the Playmarket Plays for the Young Competition 2010 and shortlisted in 2014 and 2023. She was a Finalist in the Storylines Joy Cowley Award 2015. She has been shortlisted for the Text Publishing Prize and the Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing (three times) and was the recipient of the New Zealand Society of Authors Mid-Career Writers Award in 2010 and a CLNZ/NZSA research grant in 2015. In April 2014, she travelled to Turkey as a member of the Gallipoli Volunteers program to help out at the Anzac Day ceremonies. In April 2016, she was awarded the Anzac Bridge Fellowship, and in December 2016, she went to Antarctica with the Antarctica NZ community engagement programme (formerly Artists and Writers to Antarctica). She was awarded the Easter residency at the Michael King Writers Centre in 2019 and a CNZ Arts Continuity Grant in 2020 and was shortlisted for the NZSA/Auckland Museum research grant in 2020 and the NZSA Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship in 2021. She was shortlisted and runner up for the Laura Solomon Prize 2022. Philippa is a frequent speaker at book-related events and seminars and visits schools around the country as part of the Writers in Schools programme. She is passionate about the need to tell our stories and our history to our children and young people.
Iona Winter
Area: West Coast
Genre: Poetry, short stories, hybrid fiction, essay, memoir, novel (assessment only).
Website
Iona Winter (Waitaha/Kāti Mamoe/Celtic) is a poet, essayist, storyteller and editor. With several published collections of poetry and hybrid fiction, and most recently her first work of creative non-fiction ‘A Counter of Moons’ (2025) the 2022 CLNZ/NZSA Writers’ Award recipient, her work has been anthologised and shortlisted internationally. She is also the founder of Elixir & Star Press, an indie press dedicated to the expression of grief in Aotearoa New Zealand.
She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (AUT), is actively involved with writers in Te Wai Pounamu, a committee member with NZSA Top of the South, and has served on several literary boards, including The Coalition for Books, takahē and Flash Frontier. Iona’s creative work includes poems spraypainted on fences, collaborative exhibitions with musicians and mixed-media artists, and performances at festivals locally and abroad. When she’s not writing you’ll probably find her in the garden. Iona lives in Reefton, on Aotearoa’s southern West Coast.
Alison Wong
Area: Geelong, Victoria
Genre: literary and general fiction/novels, poetry, creative nonfiction/essays/memoir
Alison Wong is a fourth-generation Cantonese New Zealand writer of novels, creative non-fiction/memoir and poetry. Her work has been translated and published in French, Spanish, Polish, Hungarian, Italian and Chinese.
She lives in Australia and returns to Aotearoa NZ, particularly to Napier and Wellington, but most interactions would be by email, Zoom, Whatsapp and/or phone.
Alison spent several years in China in the 1980s and 1990s. She has some familiarity with Mandarin and Cantonese, but is not fluent. In 2014 she was the inaugural NZ writer on the Shanghai International Writers’ Programme and in 2016 she held a Sun Yat Sen University International Writers’ Residency. She was awarded the 2002 Robert Burns Fellowship, a 2022 Marion Orme Page Regional Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and in 2024 was made an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate.
Her novel, As the Earth Turns Silver, won the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2010 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. In 2018 it was voted by NZ booksellers as one of their top twenty bestsellers of the decade.
Her poetry collection, Cup, was shortlisted for Best First Book for Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her poetry appeared in Best NZ Poems 2015, 2007 and 2006 and in international publications. She is working on a Journeys Home: A Memoir from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and China, and her essays/memoir pieces have been published in Aotearoa, Australia, China, the US and Mexico. She has taught poetry and novel-writing workshops.
In 2018 she was one of the poetry judges for the Ockham NZ Book Awards and in 2020, a consulting editor for the Asian culture site Hainamana. She is coeditor of A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP, 2021), the first anthology of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction by Asian New Zealanders. She is working on a revised edition. She has been a judge of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and is a fiction judge at the 2026 Ockham NZ Book Awards.