Dr Barbara Sumner is the author of Tree of Strangers (Massey University Press) and the historical novel The Gallows Bird, published by Pantera Press / Hardie Grant (Sydney 2024). Her forthcoming book is BASTARDS: Adoption and the manufacture of identity. She is the founder of the Substack newsletter Adoption Deconstructed.

She holds a PhD in Critical Adoption Studies and Creative Non-fiction (hybrid) and an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington.

Alongside her writing, she has worked extensively in film and journalism. With her husband, cinematographer Tom Burstyn, she co-manages Cloud South Pictures. Their feature documentary This Way of Life (2009) won the Berlinale Generation Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and collected awards at festivals worldwide.

She lives in Napier.

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