Stella Hutchinson is the author of The Wren and the Swordfish Pilot (2022) and The Fundraiser (2024). She was born in the New Forest, Hampshire into a zany book-loving family. She grew up in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, England. At the age of eighteen she went to work for a shipping company in London, but later won a doctoral scholarship to study maritime history. She now lives in Auckland with her husband and their twin sons. She has also written a non-fiction book called Voyages with a Merchant Prince - showcasing an original diary written on board ship by a Liverpool woman in the 1830s. When she's not writing books she enjoys learning new languages and making costumes for community theatre.