Kaz Kennedy is a New Zealand novelist writing emotionally driven contemporary fiction that explores intimacy, power, grief, and chosen family. She is the author of The Tide Inside Her, the first novel in the Muriwai Heart series, set on Auckland’s west coast and centred on love as transformation rather than rescue.

Writing previously under the name K R Whittaker, Kaz published the YA science-fiction novel Fracture (2012), which was self-published and later nationally distributed in New Zealand through South Pacific Books, with retail placement including Whitcoulls, Paper Plus and Airport stores.

Her current work blends sharp dialogue, psychological depth, and a strong sense of place, often using landscape and weather as emotional architecture. She lives in Aotearoa New Zealand and is currently completing further novels in the Muriwai Heart series.

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