Vana is a Greek-New Zealand poet who has been moving between Aotearoa and Kirihi Greece, and has now settled in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Her most recent book The Grief Almanac: A Sequel (Seraph 2019), followed Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima (Seraph 2009) in experimenting with hybridity and c

Anna is an award winning journalist, writer and critic. She writes regularly for Newsroom, Metro Magazine, The Listener and The Guardian, among other outlets, and she is a book critic for RNZ. In 2022 she was named runner up best reviewer in the 2022 Voyager Media Awards.Whilst on her residency An

Madison is a Wellington-based editor and works for the Air Force. Her hobbies include painting and chronically reinventing herself. She holds a Master of Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters and is the author of the Ockham award winning essay collection Specimen, publi

Erik is the author of the poetry collections There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018) and Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), both with Victoria University Press. The former was shortlisted for best book of poems at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.With Jordan Hamel, Rebecc

Pauline is an author and educationalist of Samoan, Tuvaluan, Scottish and Irish heritage.  Her first book Dawn Raid: My New Zealand Story received Best New Author at the 2018 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and a Storylines NZ Notable Book Award in 2019. It was released as an a

Craig is a Wellington-based writer who works as Publishing Manager at Te Herenga Waka University Press and is our 14th writer-in-residence for the year. His short story ‘The Rule of Twelfths’ appeared in Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, and hi

Emma (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) is a junior doctor at Middlemore Hospital. Emma hosts the RNZ podcast on Māori health equity, Getting Better, which won best podcast at the Voyager media awards in 2021. She won Voyager Opinion Writer of the Year in 2020. Emma’s writing has been published at The Sp

Born in Whanganui and raised on farms around the North Island, Bren MacDibble incorporates her love of the land into her environmentally themed children’s books. Bren did the big OE in her mid 20s and moved to Melbourne for the next twenty years. A house fire prompted her to move on and she lived in

We have welcomed our 12th resident for the year Shriya – her creative practice (plays, film scripts, short stories, and poems) focuses on people’s daily life rendered extraordinary by their unique personal experiences.In 2015 Shriya produced her first photo project titled ‘the Backstory Project’.

Clare was born in Aotearoa, raised on Whadjuk Noongar Country in Western Australia and has lived in Pōneke since 2005. Her first novel, Unsheltered (Scribner, Simon And Schuster, 2021) was warmly received on both sides of the Tasman. New Zealand reviewers described it as ‘astonishing’, ‘heart-breaki

Our tenth writer-in-residence for the year, Gillian is an award-winning children’s author. Her books include the popular “Explore and Discover” series about nature habitats. Her most recent book is New Zealand Nature Heroes: inspiration and activities for young conservationists.  Gillian has a backg

Our ninth resident for the year, Sinead (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou) is a kairangahau and writer who lives in Wellington. Her work has been published with Starling, Sport, Turbine Kapohau, The Pantograph Punch, RNZ and in the recent anthology Out Here: An Anthology of Takatapui

Tara is a Te Whanganui-a-Tara based cartoonist and art school drop-out. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Massey University and can often be found in the front row of book events, illustrating authors and their ideas. You can find her work in many places, including The Sapling, Stasis Journ

Our seventh resident for the year, Michele has been a writer, producer and dancer across the globe. Her fiction and non-fiction has been published widely across many mediums and broadcast for radio both in New Zealand and the UK.She was New Zealand’s 2010 Robert Burns Fellow, and as a screenwriter

Matthew is a writer, scholar, and teacher based in Wellington. He returned home in 2021 after several years teaching university English in Iowa. Much of his scholarship has focused on the mimetic theory of René Girard, and he is currently working on a literary and cultural study of the rivalries bet

We have welcomed our fifth writer-in-residence for the 2022 Programme…Ashleigh is the author of How I Get Ready (VUP, 2019), Can You Tolerate This? (VUP, 2016), and Magnificent Moon (VUP, 2012). Her poetry and essays have been widely published in New Zealand and overseas. She won a Windham-Campbel

Scott’s (Ngāti Kahu), first home was on an air-force base in Blenheim, New Zealand. His love of books came from the birthday gift his father continues to give him every year.Scott works in advertising. He writes novels, short stories and blogs about original ideas he wants to share. He is our four

Faith (Sāmoa|Germany, Clan Gunn|England), is a writer and editor who grew up in the Waikato but now lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. She is the founder of Saufo`i Press that publishes poetry books by Pacific poets in Aotearoa.  She graduated with a Master of Creative Writing from the International Institut

Our second writer-in-residence for the year, Shilo (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maniapoto) is an award-winning writer and journalist. The Pōrangi Boy is her first book and the winner of the Young Adult Fiction category at the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2021. She was a TV journalist for Marae

Happy New Year! We are very happy to have welcomed Claire as our first writer-in-residence for 2022.Claire is a fiction writer and legal researcher based in Rotorua. Her fiction has been published in Sport, Landfall, Kapohau/Turbine and Takahē, and read on Radio New Zealand’s National Programme.