List of Mentors for NZSA Youth Mentor Programme
Harriet Allan
Area: Auckland
Genre: adult fiction (all genres except adult fantasy and sci-fi), young adult fiction and general nonfiction
Website
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.
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.
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/).
Cassie Hart
Area: New Plymouth
Genre: Sci-fi, fantasy (including urban fantasy, paranormal romance, magical realism, etc), horror, anything that is a mash of these things, with or without romance elements. Any length, excluding short story collections and poetry.
Website: just-cassie.com
Cassie Hart is a multi-award-winning Māori (Kāi Tahu, Makaawhio) speculative fiction writer who enjoys delving into human nature in all its beauty and disarray.
In 2022 her tradtional debut, Butcherbird, won Best Novel for the Sir Julius Vogel awards, and in other years she has been an SJV winner in a range of categories, as well as a Hugo and Australian Shadow Awards finalist.
In 2018 she was selected as one of six emerging Māori writers to participate in the Te Papa Tupu incubator programme, where she worked on Butcherbird, a supernatural suspense set under the watchful gaze of Mount Taranaki. Butcherbird released from Huia in August 2021.
As well as self-publishing a range of novellas and novels, Cassie has co-edited three short story anthologies, worked as a freelance editor for almost a decade, and is always looking for new ways to collaborate with others.
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.
David Hill
Area: New Plymouth
Genre: Fiction for YA and Children
David Hill is a fulltime writer whose novels, plays and short stories for children and teenagers have been published in some 14 countries. Winner of Times Educational Supplement Special Needs Award, CBC Children’s Book Award (USA) for See Ya, Simon, Esther Glen Medal for Fat, Four-Eyed and Useless, prize-winner in AIM Book Awards, and the NZ Post Book Awards. David has received the Margaret Mahy Medal Award, and has been translated into many languages including German, French, Chinese, Japanese, and Dutch, and has recently been awarded the Prix D’Adolire in France. He has held Writer’s Residencies in NZ and the USA. In 2013, his novel “My Brother’s War” won the NZ Post Junior Fiction Award. In 2023, his novel BELOW won the same award. He’s also received a CNZM in 2024’s New Year Honours list.
David also writes for adults, books, newspaper pieces – humour, travel, reviews. Stories and plays. His work is published extensively overseas. In 2001 he had books translated into Mandarin and Estonian and received the Gaelyn Gordon Best-Loved book Award for See Ya Simon. He likes writing about fears and embarrassments. And for young people because they’re ‘such a truthful audience’.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.