List of Mentors for NZSA Youth Mentor Programme

Harriet Allan

Area: Auckland
Genre: Fiction Adult fiction (except fantasy and sci-fi), young adult and 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 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 editor.

Airini Beautrais

Area: Whanganui
Genre:Poetry, Fiction, Creative nonfiction

Airini Beautrais is a multi-award winning writer of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. Her most recent work is the essay collection The Beautiful Afternoon (THWUP 2024). Airini is also a teacher and has worked in education for almost two decades. She lives in Whanganui.

Nick Bollinger

Area: Wellington
Genre: Non-fiction, memoir

Nick Bollinger is a Wellington-based writer, critic and broadcaster with a special interest in music and cultural history. His book Goneville: A Memoir, drew on his personal experiences as a touring musician in the 1970s to tell the parallel stories of the New Zealand pub circuit and the campus underground. It won the 2015 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing.

In 2021 he was granted the J.D. Stout Research Fellowship to work on his book Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand, which was published the following year and was awarded Best Illustrated Non-Fiction in the 2023 Ockham Book Awards.

For more than twenty years he was a music columnist for the Listener, while his voice will be familiar to many from his broadcasts for Radio New Zealand, most notably the music review show The Sampler, which he produced and presented from 2001 until just last year. In 2023 he was the Lilburn Research Fellow and began working on a collection of essays about New Zealand music and national myths.

Bronwyn Elsmore

Area: Auckland
Genre: Adult and children’s fiction, short story, non-fiction, plays
Website: www.flaxroots.com

Bronwyn is a multi-award and prize-winning writer of short stories, books, plays and articles. She is the author of 12 books and has seen many of her short stories published in a variety of publications, as well as producing her own collection. She has had numerous plays produced and has also authored work for academic publications. Throughout her writing career she has been an advertising copywriter, freelancer, contract writer, editor, education writer, playwright, writing mentor and tutor, competition judge, and an academic writer during her years as an academic. She now prefers to write fiction – novels, short stories and plays.

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; YA. Member of NZAMA.

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 2024 she won the IWW Short Story Prize; in 2023 she was Highly Commended in the Kathleen Grattan Award for a Sequence of Poems. She has been shortlisted in the Grimshaw Sargeson Award and twice in the Sargeson Short Story Prize. She has judged 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/).

Maria Gill

Area: Auckland
Genre: Children’s nonfiction, creative nonfiction, picture books, children’s novels
Website: www.mariagill.co.nz

Maria Gill has written 62 books over 20 years. Her book ‘Anzac Heroes’ won the 2016 New Zealand Children’s & Young Adult Supreme Book Award as well as the Nonfiction Award. Storylines have selected eleven of her books as Notable Books and in 2012 ‘New Zealand Hall of Fame’ won the Children’s Choice Award (nonfiction category). In 2020, Storylines awarded Maria the Margaret Mahy Medal for outstanding services to children’s literature.
Maria has a teaching degree (DipTchg, BEd), a journalism degree (GradDipJour), and a masters in creative writing (MCW).

Over the years, Maria has mentored budding writers in a nationwide children’s writing group Kiwi Write4Kidz, Write Like an Author workshops, and inspired young writers in schools. She has also taught writing workshops at conferences in New Zealand and Australia.
Maria was a creative/writer in residence at the Christchurch Arts Centre in 2021 and is the current Chair of the Auckland Branch of NZSA.

Siobhan Harvey

Area: Auckland
Genre: Creative nonfiction, memoir, fiction and poetry

Siobhan Harvey is the author of creative nonfiction, memoir, fiction and poetry. Her eight books include the 2021 New Zealand Book Awards long-listed, Ghosts (Otago University Press, 2021). She was 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. Her work has been published in international and local anthologies and journals, including Acumen (UK), Arc (Ca), Asia Literary Review (HK), Feminine Divine: Voices of Power & Invisibility (Cyren US, 2019), Fourth Genre (US), Griffith Review (Aus), Strong Words #2: the best of the Landfall Essay Competition (Otago University Press, 2021), Stand (UK) and Tarot (NZ). 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. This year she will teach her third online fiction course for Allen and Unwin. She has a Masters of Creative Writing from the IIML and has mentored for Te Kaituhi Māori. In 2024 Emma was the recipient of a Springboard Award from the Aotearoa Arts Foundation.

Stephanie Johnson

Area: Auckland
Genre: Short stories, novels, stage plays, non-fiction.

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.

Anne Kennedy

Area: Auckland
Genre: Poetry, fiction (novel and short form), screenplay (drama).

Anne Kennedy is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, screenplay editor and teacher. Awards include the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry, the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry, and the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. Anne has taught creative writing for over 20 years in tertiary institutions (University of Hawai`i at Manoa, Manukau Institute of Technology, Massey University), high schools (for Auckland Writers Festival) and community workshops, and she has mentored writers at all stages of the creative process.

Lesley Marshall

Area: Whangarei
Genre: Anything except poetry.
Website: Editline

Lesley Marshall runs Editline, a freelance editing service in Northland. She has over 40 years’ experience in editing and assessing general fiction, short stories, thrillers, romances, historical novels, women’s fiction, sci-fi, plays and family histories. She always tries to edit within the writer’s voice and style. Lesley has edited many award-winning short stories one of which was made into a film. She is currently teaching on-line writing and editing papers for NorthTec, and co-editing a national magazine. On an occasional basis she has edited manuscripts for various publishing houses, and is a regular appraiser, assessor and mentor for the New Zealand Society of Authors. Lesley is a member of the Institute of Professional Editors and was a founding member of the NZ Association of Manuscript Assessors.

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.

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.

Cristina A Schumacher

Area: Hamilton
Genre: Fiction: Flash fiction, Short story, Fantasy, History, Romance. Non-fiction: Self-help, (auto)biography, Memoir, Spirituality and esotericism, Language teaching and learning manuals, Storytelling
Website: cristinaschumacher.com

I have an innate appreciation for the power of stories and how to make them truly compelling. I recognise through my love of words that the ways in which they are used make the difference in creating a good story. I see creative writing as a process and when I provide feedback, I try to make sure that my contribution is both constructive and feasible so that authors feel genuinely motivated to continue improving their work. I am a multilingual writer and a linguist, and I have written poetry and fiction – flash, short, novel – all my life. With my experience of over 40 years of consistent contact with the written word through narratives, translations and language materials that I have produced, edited and proofread, I have developed the capacity to identify and indicate the points for improvement in texts of different kinds. Additionally, my extensive storytelling training under the mentoring of James McSill (www.mcsill.com) has further enabled me to approach a manuscript from a technical point of view and provide feedback towards professional publishing.

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.

Alison Wong

Area: Geelong, Victoria
Genre: literary and general fiction/novels, poetry, creative nonfiction/essays/memoir

Alison Wong is a fourth-generation Cantonese New Zealand writer of novels, creative non-fiction/memoir and poetry. Her work has been translated and published in French, Spanish, Polish, Hungarian, Italian and Chinese.

She lives in Australia and returns to Aotearoa NZ, particularly to Napier and Wellington, but most interactions would be by email, Zoom, Whatsapp and/or phone.

Alison spent several years in China in the 1980s and 1990s. She has some familiarity with Mandarin and Cantonese, but is not fluent. In 2014 she was the inaugural NZ writer on the Shanghai International Writers’ Programme and in 2016 she held a Sun Yat Sen University International Writers’ Residency. She was awarded the 2002 Robert Burns Fellowship, a 2022 Marion Orme Page Regional Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and in 2024 was made an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate.

Her novel, As the Earth Turns Silver, won the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2010 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. In 2018 it was voted by NZ booksellers as one of their top twenty bestsellers of the decade.

Her poetry collection, Cup, was shortlisted for Best First Book for Poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her poetry appeared in Best NZ Poems 2015, 2007 and 2006 and in international publications. She is working on a Journeys Home: A Memoir from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and China, and her essays/memoir pieces have been published in Aotearoa, Australia, China, the US and Mexico. She has taught poetry and novel-writing workshops.

In 2018 she was one of the poetry judges for the Ockham NZ Book Awards and in 2020, a consulting editor for the Asian culture site Hainamana. She is coeditor of A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP, 2021), the first anthology of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction by Asian New Zealanders. She is working on a revised edition.