RESIDENTIAL WORKSHOP - SPEAKERS

Dame Anne Salmond is an historian, writer and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Maori Studies at the University of Auckland. She has won numerous awards for books including Amiria, Eruera: Teachings of a Maori Elder, Two Worlds: First meetings between Maori and European 1642-1772 and Between Worlds: Early Exchanges between Maori and Europeans 1773-1815. Recently The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas won the History Category and the Montana Medal for Non Fiction at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand In 1990, and in 2004 received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement.

Brian Boyd is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Auckland and is recognised as the foremost authority on the life and works of Vladimir Nabokov. His internationally acclaimed two-volume biography of Nabokov – The Russian Years and The American Years, won prizes two years in a row at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards and his work has been translated into 12 languages. David Bordwell compares his latest book On the Origin of Stories; Evolution, Cognition and Fiction (Belknap Press) with Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism for its imaginative sweep and analytical precision. His co-edited Evolution, Literature and Film: A Reader will be published early in 2010 by Columbia UP and he is now working on a biography of the philosopher Karl Popper.

Speakers

Deborah Challinor was born in Huntly, served as a Territorial Force soldier, and holds a PhD in New Zealand History from the University of Waikato. In 1998, Grey Ghosts: New Zealand Vietnam Vets Talk About Their War was published, followed by Who'll Stop the Rain (co-written with Elizabeth Lancaster) about Agent Orange and the children of N.Z Vietnam veterans. She also wrote the local history book Waikato and contributed to Heritage Hamilton: Historic Buildings. Her first historical novel, Tamar, was published in 2002, and was a bestseller along with others in the series, White Feathers and Blue Smoke. Other bestselling novels followed, including Union Belle, about the 1951 waterfront strike. She has worked as a fulltime writer and historian since 2000. A revised and updated edition of Grey Ghosts was published in April 2009.

Christine Cole Catley, D.C.N.Z.M., QSM, is one of the best known teachers of journalism and writing in New Zealand. She is past president of honour of NZSA (Pen NZ), headed New Zealand's first Polytechnic Journalism course and co-founded Parents Centre N.Z. She was instrumental in establishing both the Frank Sargeson Trust and the Michael King Writers Studio Trust. Her independent publishing house Cape Catley, founded in 1973, has published several biographies. Christine wrote Bright Star: Beatrice Hill Tinsley, Astronomer and, with Dinah Holman, Fairburn and Friends and Bloody Marvellous – George Haydn 1919-2005. She writes, edits and publishes books from her home in Devonport and is working on her autobiography.

Sandra Coney made her name as the editor of the women's magazine Broadsheet and in particular as the author of the best-selling The Unfortunate Experiment, which gained 3rd prize in the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards 1989. Her writing on women's history includes Every Girl: A Social History of Women and the YWCA in Auckland and Standing in the Sunshine. Currently, she chairs the Auckland Regional Council Parks and Heritage Committee. Piha: A History in images was highly commended in the J M Sherrard Award in NZ Regional and Local History 1998 and Piha: Guardians of the Iron Sands about the Piha Surf Life Saving Club was published in 2009. She has also been researching the history of every soldier named on the First World War Roll of Honour Plaque at Lion Rock who went from the State Sawmill at Piha.

Caroline Daley is an Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Auckland, where she teaches courses in New Zealand cultural and social history, including a graduate course on the writing of New Zealand history. She is editor of the New Zealand Journal of History and has contributed to many publications exploring the issue of gender in shaping New Zealand history. Her books include The Gendered Kiwi (with Deborah Montgomerie) and Leisure and Pleasure: Reshaping and Revealing the New Zealand Body 1900-1960. She has written an essay on modernity, leisure and consumption for the New Oxford History of New Zealand and is writing a book about beauty queens and physique kings in twentieth century New Zealand.

Paul Diamond (Ngati Haua, Te Rarawa and Nga Puhi) is a writer, historian and broadcaster. After working as an accountant for seven years, he switched to journalism in 1997. Paul's journalism has been recognised with Qantas Media Awards, Peace Awards and a David Low Chevening Fellowship to Oxford University. His first book, A Fire in Your Belly, a collection of interviews with Maori leaders, was published by Huia in 2003. His second book, an illustrated biography of Makereti (1873-1930), Makereti: taking Maori to the World was published by Random in 2007. Paul also contributed an essay to Sexuality and the stories of Indigenous People, published by Huia in 2007. He is researching the life of Charles MacKay, a mayor of Wanganui, who was convicted of attempted murder after he shot the writer Walter D'Arcy Cresswell in 1920.

Sam Elworthy was raised in South Canterbury, went to university in Dunedin and later wrote Ritual Song of Defiance: a social history of students at the University of Otago 1890-1990. He was awarded a Fulbright New Zealand Graduate Award in 1991 to complete a PhD in History at Rutgers University, and stayed for fifteen years in the US. The last ten years were spent as Editor-in-Chief of Princeton University Press, where he published science and natural history books. In 2007 he returned to become Director of Auckland University Press. Recent successes include Iain Sharp's Heaphy, David Veart's First Catch your Weka: A Story of New Zealand Cooking, and Barry Gustafson's political biography Kiwi Keith.

Janet Hunt has had a diverse career as a teacher, a lecturer in design, graphics and media and in publishing as a production editor. Terry Sturm said of her first book, Hone Tuwhare: a Biography, that "the book's scholarship, lightly worn, is impeccable". Her next book, A Bird in the Hand: Keeping New Zealand Wildlife Safe won the 2004 New Zealand Post Book of the Year and the Elsie Locke Medal for Non-Fiction 2004. Wetlands of New Zealand: A bitter-sweet story won the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards Environment category, the Montana Medal for Non- Fiction, and is also on the shortlist for the 2009 Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Award. She currently works from Waiheke Island as a graphic designer and writer and is working on a children's non-fiction book about godwits to be titled E3 Call Home.

Gordon McLauchlan is best known as a cultural critic and a social historian and worked as a journalist, feature writer, sports writer and sub-editor before becoming a freelance writer in 1973. He first drew attention in 1976 with the bestselling The Passionless People and has since created a large body of work, with titles as diverse as The ASB and its Community, A History of New Zealand Humour and The Big Con. He spent ten years as the editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Encyclopaedia and was elected to the world executive of PEN International in 1996. Recent work includes A Short History of New Zealand and The Life and Times of Auckland. He is currently in demand as a commentator on the political structure of the Super City.

Gavin McLean is a Senior Historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington. Many of his books reflect his major interests in maritime and business history, constitutional and political history, heritage and local history. Recent works include Frontier of Dreams (co-edited with Bronwyn Dalley), The Governors: New Zealand Governors and Governors-General, Heartlands: New Zealanders Write About Where History Happened (co-edited with Kynan Gentry), Whare Raupo: The Reed Books Story, Kiwitown's Port: the Story of Oamaru's Harbour and How to do Local History. A longer term project is to write about the history published by NZ historians.

Paul Monin holds degrees in history and politics from Canterbury and McMaster (Canada) universities and became a freelance history researcher and writer in the late 1980s. His first book was Waiheke Island: A History and he then completed the Waitangi Tribunal commission on the Gulf Islands and Maori claimant commission Wai: 355. This is My Place: Hauraki Contested 1769-1875, (called in reprint Hauraki Contested) won a J.M. Sherrard Major Award in New Zealand Regional and Local History in 2004. He is contributing a chapter on the Maori economy to the forthcoming New Oxford History of New Zealand and is currently writing a book about Maori engagement with colonial capitalism 1840-1870.

Iain Sharp is a columnist, reviewer, critic and librarian. He has written several volumes of poetry, including The Singing Harp and She is Trying to Kidnap the Blind Person, and was for a short time fiction editor of Landfall. His book Real Gold: Treasures of Auckland City Libraries features the rare books in the Auckland City collection. His most recent publication is Heaphy, a major illustrated biography of the 19th century colonial artist, surveyor and explorer Charles Heaphy. He works in Special Collections at Auckland Central Library.

Monty Soutar (Ngati Porou, Ngati Awa) has published extensively on oral history and the Maori war effort overseas. He has been Director of Gisborne's Tairawhiti Museum, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Maori Studies at Massey University, and is a guardian of the Alexander Turnbull Library and a member of the Waitangi Tribunal and the National Archives Council. In 2009 he published Nga Tama Toa: the price of Citizenship, about C Company of the 28th (Maori) Battalion. He is presently the CEO of Te Runanga o Ngati Porou.

Geoff Walker, who has a background in newspaper and television journalism, has been Publishing Director at Penguin Books since 1985. He has published a large number of New Zealand's leading writers, including Lloyd Jones, Maurice Gee, Witi Ihimaera, Anne Salmond, James Belich and Michael King, and his publications have won many awards. Geoff was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to literary publishing in 2005.

Bridget Williams has been publishing in New Zealand since 1976, working first for Oxford University Press where she produced (and co-edited with Bill Oliver) The Oxford History of New Zealand. She became Managing Director of Allen & Unwin (NZ), and a leading publisher of history and politics, with a growing list of Maori titles and women's studies. Titles included The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and Claudia Orange's Treaty of Waitangi. In 1990, Bridget Williams Books was formed, and from 1995-98, AUP/BWB jointly published two Montana Book of the Year Award winners - Judith Binney's Redemption Songs and Jessie Munro's The Story of Suzanne Aubert. Now a smaller, independent company again, BWB continues to publish authors such as Andrew Sharp, Jane Kelsey and Judith Binney.