Virginia left home at age three in search of adventure in suburban Christchurch but was caught and returned within a couple of hours. The next time she left home, fifteen years later, was in leathers on a Honda 350, on a solo tour of the North Island. Before then her adventures were mostly of the imaginary kind: devouring a treasure chest of books and writing her own stories, plays and poems.

Writing, in one form or another she has been doing ever since. She left Victoria University of Wellington with an Honours degree In History and English. With creative jobs scarce, she was provoked into applying for a job advertised for “an ambitious young man in search of a challenge”. The employer was IBM, and for a while she enjoyed the pay and the challenge of writing code but realised she needed creative work.

Since then, Virginia honed her writing skills working for TVNZ and the independent film industry, and for a feminist collective in Geneva, working on Women in Development issues by day while hosting dinners for her diplomat husband’s contacts by night. On return to New Zealand, as a single parent with a mortgage, creative writing was an unaffordable luxury. She surfed the turbulent waves of the neo-liberal revolution of the nineties, working senior jobs in government and business.  She was the founding CEO of the Arts Marketing Board, set up to promote New Zealand visual art, then moved to marketing for a national law firm.

Once her son was at university, Virginia leaped off the corporate hamster wheel and wrote business biographies, framed as Nation Builders. She self-published the first one, on the founder of Tait Industries, which was picked up for national distribution. The next two were accepted for publication by Random House. Allan Hubbard, A Man Out of Time became a New Zealand best-seller.

On Match.com, she met an American scientist who would become her husband, and they lived between Auckland and New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment. She attended writers’ workshops and conferences in the United States, which resulted in her learner novel.

Relocating to Nelson, New Zealand, she embarked on a dual-timeline historical novel that melded her passion for history and dance. Saving Nijinsky is based on the true story of ballet stars Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronia, set in the glittering world of Tsarist Russia and Belle Époque Paris. Saving Nijinsky won an award in the 2025 New Zealand Society of Authors Complete Manuscript contest.

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