Speakers

Alan Duff was born in Rotorua in 1950. He has written novels, including Once Were Warriors, One Night Out Stealing and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, a novella (State Ward), several children’s books and a number of non-fiction works. Once Were Warriors won the Pen Best First Book of Fiction Award and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? won the Montana New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. Both novels were made into internationally acclaimed films. Duff was the driving force behind the Books in Homes scheme, which, with commercial sponsorship and government support, aims to break the cycle of illiteracy, poverty, anger and violence among underprivileged children by providing books for them to own. His latest book is A Conversation with My Country.

Alison Glenny is a queer Pākehā writer living in Kāpiti. Her Antarctic-themed collection of prose poems and fragments, The Farewell Tourist, won the Kathleen Grattan poetry award in 2017 and was published by Otago University Press in 2018. In the second half of 2019 she held an Ursula Bethell writer’s residency at the University of Canterbury. Her project, which drew on ecopoetics and queer history, was inspired by pioneering mountaineer and feminist Freda du Faur. Alison has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies from the University of Canterbury.

Alison Whittaker is a Gomeroi multitasker from the floodplains of Gunnedah in NSW. Between 2017–2018, she was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard Law School, where she was named the Dean’s Scholar in Race, Gender and Criminal Law.

Her debut poetry collection, Lemons in the Chicken Wire, was awarded the State Library of Queensland’s black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship in 2015, and was published by Magabala Books in 2016. Her latest book, Blakwork, was published in 2018.

As a poet and essayist, her work has been published in the Sydney Review of Books, Seizure, Overland, Westerly, BuzzFeed, Griffith Review, the Lifted Brow, Meanjin and Archer.

Alison was the co-winner of the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize in 2017 for her poem, 'Many Girls White Linen'. Most recently, she was the Australian Indigenous Poet-In-Residence for the 2018 Queensland Poetry Festival.

Alistair Fraser is a practitioner of ngā taonga pūoro who has been researching, making, performing and composing with these taonga since 1999. Al has elegantly woven taonga pūoro into many projects that are recognised as being at the forefront of New Zealand arts practice, through collaborations with artists such as Dr Richard Nunns, Ariana Tikao, Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, Trinity Roots - Motu Oiléain, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Rhian Sheehan, Joe Michael, Desna Whaanga-Schollum, Israel Starr, STROMA, and Bridget Douglas, and in settings that span jazz and improvised music, ambient music, electroacoustic music, film, dance, Māori music, classical music and the visual arts.

Anahera Gildea (Ngāti Tukorehe) is a poet, short story writer, teacher, and essayist. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and her first book ‘Poroporoaki to the Lord My God: Weaving the Via Dolorosa’ was published by Seraph Press in 2016. She has a Masters of Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, as well as Graduate Diplomas in Psychology and Teaching, and is currently undertaking doctoral research at Victoria University of Wellington, developing critical literary theory based on Māori intellectual traditions. She lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara with her partner and son.

Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College, edits fiction for Fence magazine, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their writing has appeared in various literary journals including Ploughshares, Mutha, the Millions, jubilat, the Brooklyn Rail, Faggot Dinosaur, and Encyclopedia, Vol. II. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, a 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards. Paul, originally published by Rescue Press in 2017, is out now from Picador UK (distributed by Macmillan Australia).

Arihia Latham is of Ngai Tahu Māori, English, Irish and Dutch descent and lives in Wellington. She is a facilitator, writer, rongoā practitioner and mother. Her writing has featured in Huia short story collections, RNZ, Landfall and Oranui journals

Bart van Es is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Catherine’s College. He is the author of Spenser’s Forms of History, Shakespeare in Company, and Shakespeare’s Comedies. He was born in the Netherlands and now lives with his family in England.

Benjamin Kingsbury was born in Auckland in 1987, and brought up in New Zealand and Pakistan. He completed an MA in History at the University of Canterbury, and received his PhD from Victoria University of Wellington. His first book, An Imperial Disaster: The Bengal Cyclone of 1876, was published by Oxford University Press in 2018. He has taught history at Victoria University of Wellington, and now works as a historian for Te Arawhiti, the Office for Māori Crown Relations.

Brannavan Gnanalingam is the author of five novels, most recently Sodden Downstream, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand book awards.

Brannavan was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Lower Hutt. He lives with his young family in Wellington and works as a lawyer.

Bronwyn Sell is many things—bestselling author, award-winning journalist, yogi, theatre nerd, karaoke hustler, soccer mum, lover of wines in the sun, perpetually terrified taker of creative risks—but at heart she’s an eternal romantic and optimist who is happiest playing with words and imaginary friends. Her romantic thrillers (under pen name Brynn Kelly) have earned starred reviews in the US and a RITA Award™, the most coveted trophy worldwide in the romance genre. Her romantic comedy Lovestruck (HarperCollins) hits New Zealand shelves in early 2020.

Carl Shuker is the author of A Mistake and four other novels: Anti Lebanon, Three Novellas for a Novel, The Lazy Boys, and The Method Actors. He is principal adviser, publications at the Health Quality & Safety Commission and lives in Wellington with his wife Anna Smaill and their two children. Photo credit Ebony Lamb

Catherine Robertson's novels have all been number one New Zealand bestsellers. Her fourth novel, The Hiding Places, also won the 2015 Nelson Libraries’ Award for New Zealand Fiction. Catherine reviews books for the New Zealand Listener and is a regular guest on Radio New Zealand’s The Panel and Jesse Mulligan’s Book Critic slot. She is married with two grown sons, two Burmese cats, two rescue dogs and a powerful vacuum cleaner. She divides her time between Wellington and Hawke’s Bay.

Charlotte Graham-McLay is a New Zealand reporter for the Guardian and a contributor to The New York Times. Her writing and reviews have also been published by Al Jazeera, Vice, the Telegraph, the BBC and New Zealand Geographic. Charlotte previously worked for a decade at Radio New Zealand.

Chigozie Obioma is a Nigerian writer and assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2015, he was named one of "100 Global Thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine. He is the first author in Booker Prize history to be nominated for their first and second book, with The Fishermen shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, and An Orchestra of Minorities shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

Chiké Frankie Edozien is a Nigerian-American writer and journalist. He is a professor of journalism at New York University and a journalist for the New York Post. Edozien is noted for his 2017 memoir Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man, which won the Lambda Literary Award in the Gay Memoir/Biography category at the 30th Lambda Literary Awards in 2018.

Chris McDowall trained as a geographer with a focus on cartography and human geography. He has worked variously as a cartographer, environmental scientist and manager at the University of Auckland, Landcare Research, the National Library of New Zealand and Figure.NZ. The common thread through his career is a desire to make the nation’s data easier to find and interpret.

Chris Tse is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of two collections of poetry published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry and a finalist at the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards) and He's So MASC. His work has recently appeared in Best New Zealand Poems 2018 and Queen Mob's Teahouse: Teh Book (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2019). Chris is currently co-editing with Emma Barnes an anthology of contemporary LGBTQIA+ Aotearoa New Zealand writers to be published by Auckland University Press. Photo credit Rebecca McMillan

Coco Solid is Jessica Hansell, a Māori/Samoan/German artist from Auckland. Hansell came up through underground music in both punk and rap, before building a discography with Parallel Dance Ensemble (Permanent Vacation, Germany), Badd Energy (Flying Nun, NZ) and radical 9-member rap collective Fanau Spa. She heads DIY project Kuini Qontrol and Equalise My Vocals which she uses to amplify women, LGBTI, queer and decolonising voices in the Pacific. Working in indigenous-driven film and television, Hansell also writes and directs cult family cartoon ‘Aroha Bridge’. She is part of Piki Films, a stable of Māori/Pasifika screenwriters founded by film-maker Taika Waititi. Hansell also has a background in literature and journalism currently completing her first book while undertaking a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Hawai’i. She was recently named a 2019 Art Laureate by the national Arts Foundation.

Poet, playwright, fiction writer, and essayist Courtney Sina Meredith is the Director of Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust. She is the author of two collections: Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick and Tail of the Taniwha.

Craig Cliff is the author of the story collection, A Man Melting, which won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, and The Mannequin Makers, which was also published in the US, UK and Romania. His latest novel, Nailing Down the Saint, tackles Hollywood, fatherhood and levitation. Craig has lived in three UNESCO Cities of Literature (Edinburgh, Iowa City, Dunedin), but calls Wellington home. Photo credit Darren Cliff

Dame Anne Salmond is a distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and a leading social scientist. She has written a series of prize-winning books about Māori life, European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific that have received much international recognition.

Fiona Kidman has published over 30 books, including novels, poetry, non-fiction and a play. She has worked as a librarian, radio producer and critic, and as a scriptwriter for radio, television and film.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships; in more recent years, The Captive Wife was runner-up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction and was joint-winner of the Readers’ Choice Award in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and her short story collection The Trouble with Fire was shortlisted for both the NZ Post Book Awards and the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Her novel This Mortal Boy won the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize, the NZ Booklovers Award and the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction.

She was created a Dame (DNZM) in 1998 in recognition of her contribution to literature, and more recently a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour.

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and columnist. Maggie & Me, his memoir about coming of age and coming out in Thatcher's Britain, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year, and won the Paddy Power Political Books 'Satire' Award and Stonewall Writer of the Year Award. Damian writes columns for the Big Issue and often appears on BBC Radio 4. He is creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. You Will Be Safe Here is his debut novel. Damian Barr lives in Brighton, UK.

Damian Christie is a journalist and broadcaster, and Director of the Aotearoa Science Agency.

As a journalist he has worked on One News, Close Up and Sunday, while his producer credits range from history shows such as Hindsight and I Was There, to feature length documentaries including most recently Kaikoura: A Big Year.
In 2016 he began focusing on making science content, producing the webseries Jamie’s World on Ice, which saw YouTube star Jamie Curry visit Antarctica, and share stories of science, sustainability and climate change with her audience. It achieved over 2.5m views on social media and won the SCANZ Excellence in Science Communication Award in 2017.

In 2017 Damian was awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize, and used the prize money to launch the Aotearoa Science Agency, which supplies science stories to New Zealand’s largest broadcasters.

Dr Hannah Critchlow is the Science Outreach Fellow at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, and has been named a Top 100 UK Scientist by the Science Council for her work in science communication. Mentioned by Nature magazine as a rising star in the life sciences in 2019, she is listed as one of the University of Cambridge's 'inspirational and successful women in science' and appears regularly on TV, radio and at festivals to discuss and explore the brain.

Becky is Ngāti Porou and Ngā Puhi and is a Senior Lecturer at the Architecture School, Victoria University of Wellington. Her research focuses on Māori identity and placemaking in Aotearoa New Zealand and the nexus between community creation, social processes and urban design. She also works to develop better participatory design processes to ensure rangatahi and tamariki voices are heard in built environment decision-making processes.

She has a PhD and MA in urban design from Oxford Brookes University, UK and under-graduate degrees in Politics and Māori studies. She is co-editor of the Our Voices series along with Prof. Kevin O’Brien (Australia) and Dr Iuugigyoo Patrick Stewart (Turtle Island) which includes Our Voices: Indigeneity and Architecture (2018) and the forthcoming (2020) Our Voices II: The Decolonial Project. She is co-chair Pōneke of the Ngā Aho Network for Māori Designers.

Elizabeth Knox is the author of thirteen novels, three novellas, and a collection of essays. The Vintner’s Luck, won the Deutz Medal for Fiction in the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize, and is published in thirteen languages. Dreamhunter, won the 2006 Esther Glen Medal. Dreamhunter’s sequel Dreamquake, 2007, was a Michael L Printz Honor book for 2008 and, in the same year, was named an ALA, a CCBC, Booklist, and New York Library best book. A collection of essays, The Love School won the biography and memoir section of the New Zealand Post book awards in 2009. Mortal Fire won a NZ Post Children’s book award and was a finalist in the LA Times Book Awards. Elizabeth’s last book is horror/science fiction, Wake. Elizabeth is an Arts Foundation Laureate and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2002. She lives in Wellington with her husband, Fergus Barrowman, and her son, Jack.

Elspeth Sandys has published nine novels, two collections of short stories and two memoirs. She has written extensively for the BBC and for RNZ as well as for TV and film. Her stage plays have been produced in the UK, the US and New Zealand. Elspeth lived for many years in the UK but has been back in her home country of New Zealand since 1990.

Emma Ng is a curator, writer and public programmer. She’s worked on design and visual arts projects for arts organisations big and small, contributed to publications like The Pantograph Punch, Hyperallergic, The Spinoff and the publisher Phaidon, and edited two publications for NYC’s Urban Design Forum. Emma is also the author of Old Asian, New Asian, published in 2017 by BWB Texts.

Faustin Linyekula is a Congolese dancer, choreographer, theatre maker and storyteller. In his work he addresses the legacy of the troubled and violent history of his country. After studying literature and drama, Linyekula left Zaïre, to settle in Nairobi, Kenya where he co-founded the first Kenyan company for contemporary dance, Gàara, in 1997. In 2001 he returned to Zaïre, by now the Democratic Republic of Congo, to found in Kinshasa the Studios Kabako, a creation and research space for performing arts. In 2007, Studios Kabako moved to Kisangani, opening up to music and film. In Kisangani, Studios Kabako are fostering the debuts of young artists from the continent, from training to production, as well as developing works with local communities around sustainability and environment.

Linyekula regularly tours and teaches in Africa, the United States and Europe, and recently joined William Kentridge as an associate artist of the 2019 Holland Festival.

Freya Daly Sadgrove is a writer and performer from Pōneke. Her poems have most recently appeared in Strays by Foundlings Press, Going Down Swinging, and Sport 46. Her debut poetry collection, Head Girl, will be published in 2020. You can find more of her work at freyadalysad.com.

Gem Wilder is a Wellington writer who has been published in Sport, Turbine/Kapohau, The Spinoff, The Sapling, and Is It Bedtime Yet? She has performed at LitCrawl, The Dowse, Enjoy Art Gallery, True Stories Told Live, The Watercooler, Kava Club Chop Suey Hui, and more. Her work focuses on the Pacific diaspora, family, inheritance, activism, religion, and ritual.

George Saunders is the author of nine books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, and the story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and was included in Time’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

Golriz Ghahraman is an Iranian-born New Zealand politician and member of Parliament. She is a former United Nations lawyer, was a child asylum seeker, and became the first refugee elected to New Zealand’s Parliament.

Gregory Kan’s work has featured in literary journals such as Atlanta Review, Cordite, Jacket, Landfall, New Zealand Listener, SPORT and Best New Zealand Poems, as well as art exhibitions, journals and catalogues. His first book of poetry, This Paper Boat, was shortlisted in the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Guled is a former refugee who is passionate about advancing and encouraging the social well-being, inclusion and development of New Zealand’s ethnic and former refugee communities. Guled is a writer, speaker, young leader and community advocate. He is recognised as one of New Zealand’s most prominent young voices advocating for a more humane, inclusive and welcoming society. He serves on the boards of a number of community organisations, and is the co-founder of Third Culture Minds.  

He was just six-years-old when his mother, a solo-parent, fled the strife of Somalia’s civil war with her nine children for a better life in New Zealand. Facing racism at school, Guled was discouraged from pursuing a higher education and left at sixteen. This wasn’t it for Guled. He went on to excel at university and is now a Senior Policy Advisor in the public sector.  

He uses his platform and profile to facilitate courageous conversations about racism and discrimination in New Zealand and what we need to do to build a truly inclusive, welcoming society.  Guled believes these discussions, and the policies and behavioural shifts that they support, are key to Aotearoa and the people who are blessed to live here reaching full potential.  He is a big fan of having open conversations about mental health and has been championing work, through his organisation Third Culture Minds, to support young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds to get the support they need.

Le Afioga a le Tama-a-Aiga, His Highness, Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta`isi Tupuola Tufuga Efi is recognised internationally as a statesman, philosopher and cultural historian. Tui Atua continues to model dynamic leadership after decades of service to Samoa and the Pacific region. He was Samoa’s Head of State from 2007 to 2017, and also served as Prime Minister (1976-1982), as leader of the Samoa Democratic United Party, and as Member of Parliament (1966-2004).

He is the current titleholder of one of Samoa’s Pāpā titles, Tui Atua, is also the current titleholder of the Tama-a-Aiga title, Tupua Tamasese, and of the Aloalii title, Ta’isi. He also holds the Tufuga and Tupuola titles from Asau and Leulumoega respectively. He is widely acknowledged in Samoa and the Pacific to be a leading cultural custodian and thought-leader, exemplified by his advocacy for the preservation and celebration of Samoan and/or Pacific Indigenous knowledges.

Exploring what he calls Samoa’s “indigenous reference”, his addresses and scholarly writing are published widely. Tui Atua serves as Adjunct Professor for Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, Aotearoa New Zealand, and in 2019 was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom.

Winnie Laban, DNZM QSO, is a former New Zealand politician. She served as the Member of Parliament for the Mana electorate, representing the Labour Party, and was the Labour Party's spokesperson for Pacific Island Affairs and for interfaith dialogue. Laban is currently Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) at Victoria University of Wellington, a role established to provide strategic direction and support for Pasifika students and staff.

Ingrid is an essayist, travel writer and poet. Her publications include the genre-bending Travelling with Augusta, 1835 and 1999, part travel book, part history of women’s travel, part love story, a co-edited collection, Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand, a book on women’s travel with Cambridge, and two poetry collections. She has a PhD from Princeton and is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Massey Wellington. She's currently working on an essay collection, Where We Swim. She can’t really swim but she likes it a lot. Ingrid is co-chair of the Steering Committee for NonfictioNOW2020. Photo credit Jane Ussher

Jack McDonald (Te Whakatōhea, Taranaki Tūturu, Te Pakakohi, Te Ātiawa) is an activist, political commentator and writer. He hails from Paekākāriki on the Kāpiti Coast, where he served as chairperson of the Paekākāriki Community Board. A former Green Party candidate, advisor, and senior officeholder, Jack has a strong campaigning background. His work informed and led the Greens’ kaupapa Māori engagement, policy and campaigning for close to a decade.

Jackson Nieuwland is a genderqueer writer, editor, and librarian born and based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. They are a co-founder of the reading/zine series Food Court. This isn't even their final form.

Jade Kake, Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Hau me Te Parawhau), Te Whakatōhea, Te Arawa, is an architectural designer, housing advocate and researcher. She has experience working directly with Māori land trusts and other Māori organisations to realise their aspirations, particularly around papakāinga housing and marae development, and in working with mana whenua groups to express their cultural values and narratives through the design of their physical environments. Jade lives within her home area of Whangārei, where she is leading several projects to support the re-establishment and development of papakāinga communities.

Jahra ‘Rager’ Wasasala is an award-winning artist and world-builder of Fijian/Euro origin based in Aotearoa. Jahra utilises her skill-sets within performance activation, contemporary dance technique and poetic/voice soundscape as a psychopomp for her shape-shifting and story-telling through her performance work. She is known for her transcending performances, powerful voice and otherworldly physicality, and is currently in development for the new solo activation work ‘GOD-HOUSE’, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Janis Freegard is the author of a novel The Year of Falling (Makaro Press) and several poetry collections, most recently The Glass Rooster (AUP). She is a past winner of the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award
and recently won the Geometry/ Open Book Poetry Contest. She lives in Wellington with an historian and a cat.

Jenny Bornholdt is a poet and anthologist. She has published many books of poems - the most recent being Lost and Somewhere Else, published in September by Victoria University Press. Last year she edited an anthology, Short Poems of New Zealand. Her poems have appeared on ceramics, in paintings and on a house. Her many honours include the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, 2002, and the Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate, 2005–6.

Jessie Bray Sharpin is a renegade historian. She has lived lives as a Gallery Assistant, Social History Curator and Bookseller. She runs Sass History walking tours to achieve her main priority in life: to shout from the rooftops all of the women’s history that has been left out of the mainstream narrative since basically forever.

Jokha Alharthi is the author of two previous collections of short fiction, a children's book, and three novels. She completed a PhD in Classical Arabic Poetry in Edinburgh, and teaches at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat. She has been shortlisted for the Shaikh Zayed Award for Young Writers and won the prize for best Omani novel for Celestial Bodies, which also won the Booker International Prize in 2019.

Ko Māungawhau te māunga, ko Whanganui-a-Tara te moana.

Jo lives in Pōneke as Artistic Director of arts company Barbarian Productions, based in an old bowling club run by the local community. Jo is a playwright, short story writer and poet, as well as a performer and director. Winner of the Bruce Mason Playwrighting Award, the Robert Burns Fellowship and also a New Generation Arts Laureate, Jo’s work focusses on radical and fun ways of bringing people together to discuss issues where there is tension. She is also passionate about improving the infrastructure for artists in our country so they can live sustainably, and most of all about using poetry – in the broadest sense – to create change.

www.barbarian.co.nz

Manawatū born and raised, Josh Morgan (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata) is a freelance illustrator and musician living in Wellington, New Zealand with his partner, the author Sacha Cotter, and their wee family. Together they form the amazing storytelling / song writing / award-winning-picture-book-making team Cotter & Morgan.

Joy Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave won several awards, including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. She is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for proven mastery in the art of poetry; a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the United States Artist Fellowship. In 2014 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame. A renowned musician, Harjo performs with her saxophone nationally and internationally, solo and with her band, the Arrow Dynamics. She has five award-winning CDs of music including the award-winning album Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears and Winding Through the Milky Way, which won a Native American Music Award for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009. Forthcoming in the fall of 2019 is a book of poetry from Norton, An American Sunrise. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Professor Juliet Gerrard trained at Oxford University, where she completed a First Class Honours degree in Chemistry and a DPhil in Biological Chemistry.

In 1993, she moved to Aotearoa New Zealand, as a research scientist at Crop & Food Research. She was appointed as a Lecturer in Biochemistry at the University of Canterbury in 1998, where she became Professor and Co-Director of the Biomolecular Interaction Centre.

In 2014, she moved to the University of Auckland as a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Chemical Sciences and later the Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Science.

Juliet’s research covers a broad base and is interdisciplinary, cutting across biochemistry, chemistry, health, agricultural and food science and biomaterial design. It also incorporates a full spectrum of fundamental and applied research. She has held an Industry and Outreach Fellowship with Callaghan Innovation and founded a start-up company.

Juliet has over 150 publications, as well as three books. She won a National Teaching Award for Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching in 2004 and played an increasingly governance role in the research sector, including as Chair of the Marsden Council and a Director for Plant & Food Research, prior to her appointment in 2018 as the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor.

Jung Chang is the internationally bestselling author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China; Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday); and Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China. Her books have been translated into over 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies outside Mainland China where they are banned. She was born in China in 1952, and came to Britain in 1978. She lives in London.

Justin Paton is one of New Zealand’s most respected writers and has been described as ‘a brilliant stylist’ whose ‘mind is a great place to visit’. Well known for his Montana Book Award-winning book How to Look at A Painting (Awa Press, 2005), Justin is the author of many books and essays on artists including, recently, Kushana Bush, Ben Quilty and Adrián Villar Rojas. His column ‘A longer look’ appears regularly in the magazine Art News New Zealand. Currently the Head Curator of International Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Justin has held top curatorial positions at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery and was the curator of New Zealand's official presentation by Bill Culbert at the 2013 Venice Biennale. He was the editor of New Zealand’s oldest literary journal, Landfall, from 2000 until 2005 and the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow in 2012. Justin lives in Sydney, Australia, but returns to New Zealand frequently.

Kara Jackson is the daughter of country folks. She is the author of Bloodstone Cowboy (Haymarket Books). She is the 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate and the 2018 Youth Poet Laureate of Chicago. Her work investigates a trail of language that leads from the South to the North. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Jackson attempts to document her lineage of divine womanhood in a country that demands its erasure. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Frontier Poetry, Rookie Mag, Nimrod Literary Journal and Saint Heron. She has two articles published in Blavity. She has two poems featured in the latest anthology edited by Kevin Coval, The End of Chiraq. Jackson is a TEDx speaker. She will attend Smith College in the fall of 2019. Her EP “A Song for Every Chamber of the Heart” is out now on all streaming platforms.

Poet Dr Karlo Mila, of Tongan and Palangi descent, won the 2006 Best First Book of Poetry for Dream Fish Floating. She is also the author of A Well Written Body and the Programme Director of the Mana Moana Experience at Leadership NZ.  Her forthcoming poetry book The Goddess Muscle will be published by Huia in time for Matariki, 2020.  She lives in Auckland with her three sons.

Kate Duignan’s first novel Breakwater was published in 2001. Her second novel, The New Ships was shortlisted for the Acorn Foundation Fiction Award in 2019. Kate is currently teaching creative writing at the IIML, at Victoria University of Wellington. Kate grew up in Wellington and England, has lived as an adult in Edinburgh and Dunedin, and now lives in Aro Valley.

Kathryn Ryan grew up in the South Island is now based in Wellington. A journalist for twenty five years, Kathryn began in print, and joined RNZ in 1999. She spent six years reporting on Parliament in RNZ's Press Gallery office, the last three as RNZ's political editor. In 2006, Kathryn became host of Nine to Noon. She has covered the last eight general elections in various roles, including co-hosting RNZ's election night programmes. Kathryn was named 2015 International Radio Personality of the Year by the Association of International Broadcasters.’

Kim Hill is a New Zealand broadcaster who currently presents the programme Saturday Morning on Radio New Zealand National, a public radio station. She was named International Radio Personality of the Year in 2012. In 2017 Kim was awarded a Gold Radio Award for Best Radio Personality: Network/Syndicated at the International Radio Program Awards. In 2012, she was awarded "International Radio Personality of the Year" by the Association for International Broadcasting.

New Zealander Kinley Salmon was born and grew up in Nelson and now works as an economist in Washington D.C. He previously worked as a consultant at McKinsey and Company and has written for The Economist. Kinley holds a Master's in Public Administration in International Development from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as well as a Graduate Diploma in Economics and a BA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Writer, reviewer and bookseller Kiran Dass appears regularly on RNZ National and 95bFM. Her writing and reviews have appeared in NZ Listener, NZ Herald, Sunday magazine, Sunday Star Times, The Spinoff, Pantograph Punch, Landfall and The Wire (UK). Kiran co-hosts the monthly books podcast, Papercuts. @SteelyDass

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Kristen R. Ghodsee was travelling in Europe, and spent the summer of 1990 witnessing first-hand the initial hope and euphoria that followed the sudden and unexpected collapse of state socialism in the former Eastern Bloc. The political and economic chaos that followed inspired Ghodsee to pursue an academic career studying this upheaval, focusing on how ordinary people’s lives – and women’s particularly – changed when state socialism gave way to capitalism. For the last two decades, she has visited the region regularly and lived for over three years in Bulgaria and the Eastern parts of reunified Germany. Now a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, she has won many awards for her work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has written nine books on gender, socialism, and postsocialism, examining the everyday experiences of upheaval and displacement that continue to haunt the region to this day. Ghodsee also writes on women's issues for the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the co-author of Professor Mommy: Finding Work/Family Balance in Academia. Her articles and essays have appeared in publications such as Eurozine, Aeon, Dissent, Foreign Affairs and The New York Times.

Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist. Her novel The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards and was shortlisted for the international 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain writing. Her 2014 novel Reach was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards and her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana Book Awards. In 2017 she was the joint winner of the Landfall essay competition and in 2016 she won the NZSA/ Janet Frame Memorial Award. In 2004 Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and in 2007 the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. In 2019 she was awarded the Arts Foundation Laureate for literature. Laurence Fearnley lives in Dunedin with her husband and son.

Lawrence Patchett is a Pākehā writer of fiction. His first book, I Got His Blood on Me: Frontier Tales, was awarded the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction. In 2013 he was awarded the Todd New Writer’s Bursary. Raised near the Waikirikiri/Selwyn River in Canterbury, he now lives near Wellington with his partner, and has two daughters. His latest book is The Burning River, published by VUP in 2019.

Albert L Refiti is a Samoan born and raised research leader in the field of Pacific spatial and architectural environment with extensive research and publication in the area supported by his teaching and lecturing for the last 15 years. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Auckland University of Technology. He is the lead researcher in the ‘Vā Moana: space and relationality in Pacific thought and identity’, a Marsden funded research project.

Linda Burgess is the author of three novels, three non-fiction titles and one collection of short stories. She is a monthly television reviewer on Radio New Zealand on Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan, and was a television and film reviewer at The Dominion Post for several years. She has won several literary awards and has been a judge for a number of our national awards. Linda was a finalist in the Voyager Media Awards 2019 with her essay 'We'd be called WAGs now'. She lives in Wellington. Photo credit Robert Burgess

Lindy West is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. She is the author of Shrill, a memoir, which is being adapted into a Hulu series starring Aidy Bryant. Her essays on feminism, social justice, body image and popular culture have been featured in Jezebel, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and on This American Life. From 2014 to 2017 she wrote a weekly political column for The Guardian. She is also the founder of I Believe You/It's Not Your Fault, an advice blog for teenagers, as well as the reproductive rights destigmatization campaign #ShoutYourAbortion. She lives in Seattle.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Psychiatry and Radiology. She received a NIH Director's Pioneer Award for her research on emotion in the brain. She lives in Boston. Her book How Emotions Are Made was published in 2017 by Macmillan.

Lloyd Jones is one of New Zealand’s most internationally successful contemporary writers. He has published essays and children’s books but his best known work is the phenomenally successful novel Mister Pip, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and Montana Medal for Fiction in 2007 and the Kiriyama Writers’ Prize in 2008, and was later adapted as a motion picture. Among his other most decorated works are The Book of Fame, winner of numerous literary awards, Biografi, a New York Times Notable Book, Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance, Paint Your Wife and Hand Me Down World.

Long Litt Woon (born 1958 in Malaysia) is an anthropologist and Norwegian Mycological Association-certified mushroom professional. She first visited Norway as a young exchange student. There she met and married Norwegian Eiolf Olsen. She currently lives in Oslo, Norway. According to Chinese naming tradition, ‘Long’ is her surname and ‘Litt Woon’ her first name.

Lucy-Anne Holmes is a writer and campaigner. Her last novel Just a Girl Standing In Front of a Boy won the Romantic Novelists Association 'Rom Com of the Year 2015' and she founded the successful No More Page 3 campaign. She lives in Hertfordshire with her partner and young son.

Lynn Freeman has worked for Radio New Zealand for much longer than she cares to admit. But she is very proud of having been the station's Arts specialist for nudging 20 years, as the host of Standing Room Only and its predecessors. Spending your days interviewing creative people from around the country and every conceivable creative art form is a great joy and privilege.

Lynn Jenner is a writer and teacher of writing. She lives on the Kāpiti coast north of Wellington. Her first book, Dear Sweet Harry (AUP 2010), won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Prize for Best First Book of Poetry. Her second book, Lost and Gone Away (AUP 2015), was shortlisted in the non- fiction category of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2016. Lynn's latest book, Peat, was published in 2019 by OUP. Lynn has a PhD in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.

Mandy Hager is a multi-award winning author of 11 novels and was recently awarded the 2019 Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal for life-time achievement and a distinguished contribution to New Zealand’s literature for young people. For the past decade she has tutored novel writing for Whitireia.

Maria Bargh (Te Arawa, Ngāti Awa) is Associate Professor in Te Kawa a Māui/Māori Studies Victoria University of Wellington. She teaches and researches various aspects of New Zealand politics including: Māori political institutions and governance, electoral politics of central and local government. She also works on Indigenous resource management and international comparisons of Indigenous involvement in renewable energy, freshwater and mining regimes.

In the years since she retired from Parliament in 1984, Marilyn Waring has published numerous books as well as continuing to contribute to the public service through university fellowships around the world, development in consultancy for Asia and the Pacific, contributions to boards and councils in New Zealand as well as her work in academia.  In 2008 she was awarded a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to women and economics, and in 2011 she received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Glasgow Caledonia University for research in international feminism and female human rights. Marilyn Waring is, today, a Professor of Public Policy at Auckland University of Technology.

Mark Stocker is the Curator of Historical International Art at Te Papa.

Matariki Williams, Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Taranaki, Ngāti Whakaue, is a Curator Mātauranga Māori at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. With Bridget Reweti she co-founded and co-edited ATE Journal of Māori Art. Her writing has appeared in various print and online publications including frieze, Art Zone, The Pantograph Punch, PhotoForum and The Spinoff. She is a trustee for Contemporary HUM, a Kāhui Kaitiaki representative on the Museums Aotearoa Board and Kaihautū Māori on the board of the National Digital Forum.

Megan Dunn is co-editor of The Spinoff art section. A former video artist who also writes widely on visual art, her first book, Tinderbox, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2017.

Melissa Clark Reynolds ONZM, ChMInstD became a Foresight Practitioner and Professional Director after 25 years experience as a technology entrepreneur and CEO of a number of Technology companies. She is a Deputy Chair of Radio NZ, and sits on the Boards of Jasmax, Kiwi Insurance and Beef and Lamb NZ Ltd. In 2016 trained as a Foresight Practitioner with The Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, and founded FutureCentre.nz. Melissa keeps bees, loves to swim in the sea and reads voraciously.

Melody Thomas is a writer, columnist and broadcaster - best known for her hit RNZ podcast BANG!, which is currently in production for a fourth season. Using real stories told by real people, BANG! is a frank (but often entertaining) exploration of sex, sexuality and relationships .

Meng Foon has taken up the appointment of Race Relations Commissioner, after 24 years at the Gisborne District Council. Mr Foon was elected as a councillor in 1995 and in 2001 he was elected Mayor, a role he held for 18 years. He is one of a handful of people of Chinese descent to have become a mayor in New Zealand. He is fluent in English, Cantonese and Te Reo Māori. As of 2019, he is still the only mayor in New Zealand who is fluent in Te Reo. He is a member of a number of community organisations including the Ngā Taonga a nā Tama Toa Trust, the New Zealand Chinese Association, Aotearoa Social Enterprise Trust and MY Gold Investments Ltd. He has released a musical number, Tu Mai, which includes various native tracks, he has been chair of Gisborne/Tarawhiti Rugby League since 2007, and is a member of the New Zealand Rugby League Board. Mr Foon is responsible for leading the work of the Human Rights Commission in promoting positive race relations.

Miri Young-Moir has a background in museums and Holocaust studies. She holds a Masters in Humanities and Social Thought, completed at New York University (USA) as a Fulbright Fellow, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Religious Studies and a Post Graduate Diploma in Education from Victoria University, Wellington. Her academic research has focused on the intersection of memorialisation, art, education and museums, and the representation of trauma and the Holocaust. Specialised in museum learning and public engagement, she is the Head of Public Programming at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.

Nadine Anne Hura (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine) has had essays published in e-Tangata, The Spinoff, The Pantograph Punch and Ora Nui. She grew up in South Auckland and now lives in Wellington with her three children.

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in San Francisco. Her first novel, The Old Drift, was published in 2019.

She won the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story, "The Sack." In 2014, she was chosen as one of the Africa 39, a Hay Festival project to identify the most promising African writers under 40. In 2011, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her first published story, “Muzungu,” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009, shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize, and anthologized in The Uncanny Reader.

You can read her writing in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Tin House, Triple Canopy, The Believer, n+1, McSweeney’s, Bidoun, Cabinet, The San Francisco Chronicle, The L.A.Review of Books, Public Books, The Guardian, and in these six short story anthologies.

She is associate professor of English at UC Berkeley. Her first book of literary criticism, Seven Modes of Uncertainty, was published in 2014 by Harvard UP.

Neo Muyanga is a composer, musician and librettist, with deep knowledge of the role protest music has played in the national liberation struggles of people in India, South Africa, Brazil and Egypt. He was composer-in-residence at the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival (2017) and the National Arts Festival of South Africa (2017), and a participant in the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD (2016). He has collaborated with activist organisations Sonke Gender Justice, Equal Education and the Community Development Resource Association and worked as a research affiliate at the University of Cape Town’s Drama School and Centre for African Studies, the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and the Humanities Research Institute, University of California in Irvine. He is also a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Institute.

Emeritus Professor Ngahuia Te Awekotuku is a writer, and advocate for Māori, feminist and lesbian issues. She was born and raised in Ohinemutu, Rotorua, and aligns primarily with the Ngati Whakaue people. For years she worked in the heritage and creative sectors, as a curator, governor, teacher and activist/advocate. Her research interests include museums, gender issues, ritual and death. In 1981, she became the first Māori woman to earn a doctorate from a New Zealand university, with a PhD on the impact of tourism on the Te Arawa people. As a curator at Waikato Museum in the 1980s, Awekotuku was among the first to insist that museums rethink how they represent Māori and indigenous culture, locally and overseas. She developed and taught the first tertiary sector Māori and Pacific Art History programme from undergraduate to doctoral level and in 1996 became this country’s first Māori woman professor. She discussed much of this in her 1991 essay collection, Mana Wahine: Selected Writings on Māori Women’s Art, Culture and Politics. She has also published numerous book chapters, poems, short fiction, articles and academic papers. Her multiple award-winning volume (2007) – Mau Moko : the world of Maori tattoo – emerged from twenty five years of experiential research in this significant art form. Retired from the academy, she continues to work in the heritage sector. Her prize-winning 2015-2016 exhibition, E Nga Uri Whakatupu : Weaving Legacies, and the accompanying illustrated book, focused on the iconic weavers, Dame Rangimarie Hetet and Diggeress Te Kanawa. She is a Fellow of the Auckland War Memorial Museum (FAWMM), and holds the Royal Society Pou Aronui Award for service to the arts and social sciences. Awekotuku is the first Maori woman emeritus professor, and one of three inaugural Ruanuku o Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, esteemed academic elders who support the National Centre for Maori Research Excellence.

Nicky Pellegrino is a Number 1 bestselling author and has written ten fabulous novels. Her inspiration comes from her Italian heritage. When her Italian father came to England he fell in love with and married a Liverpool girl. He brought to his new family his passion for food and instilled in them what all Italians know - that you live to eat instead of eating to live. This Italian mantra is the inspiration behind Nicky's delicious novels. Every summer the family left their home in Merseyside and returned to her father's home town, near Naples, in southern Italy. When Nicky met and married a New Zealander she moved to Auckland where she works as a journalist and edits a women's magazine. She hoards her annual leave so that she and her husband can return to Italy to meet up with her family and to eat the best mozzarella and research her books.

Radio Broadcaster Noelle McCarthy runs Bird of Paradise Productions, making podcasts and multimedia series with her partner, writer John Daniell. Recent releases are Good Ancestors, and Ours: 20 Objects that Shaped New Zealand. She writes for a variety of outlets in NZ and Ireland.

Nyadol Nyuon is a commercial litigator with Arnold Bloch Leibler and a community advocate.  

She was born in a refugee camp in Itang, Ethiopia, and raised in Kakuma Refugee camp, Kenya. At eighteen, Nyadol moved to Australia as a refugee. Since then she has completed a Bachelor of Arts from Victoria University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Melbourne.

In both 2011 and 2014, Nyadol was nominated as one of the hundred most influential African Australians. She is currently a board member of the Melbourne University Social Equity Institute.

In terms of advocacy, Nyadol has presented at various conferences and forums on issues impacting the settlement of African Australians in Victoria and Australia in general. She regularly appears in the media, including recent appearances on the ABC’s The Drum and as a panellist on Q&A.

Pania Newton, Ngāpuhi, Waikato, Ngāti Mahuta and Ngāti Maniapoto, is a New Zealand lawyer and activist for Māori land rights. In 2016, Newton and her cousins established the Save Our Unique Landscape Campaign (SOUL) to protect the whenua at Ihumātao in south Auckland from development. Pania’s path through life has led her to finding her purpose, her kaupapa: protecting the whenua, Ihumātao. As a frontline protector of Ihumātao she has had to step out of her comfort zone and face challenges, all in the name of saving a unique and sacred land, contributing to a better Aotearoa for all.

Pat Snedden began his professional life in publishing. He was a business adviser for Health Care Aotearoa, a primary care network of Māori, Pasifika and community groups within the not-for-profit health sector, and has worked as an economic adviser to the Ngāti Whatua o Orakei Māori Trust Board and was part of their Treaty negotiation team. In 2008 he was appointed Chief Crown Negotiator in the Muriwhenua treaty claims for the Far North region. Four of the five iwi settled in 2015. Pat was a founding director of Mai FM, our first Māori commercial radio station, and is currently a director of the Ports of Auckland, chair of the Auckland DHB, and deputy-chair of the Counties Manukau DHB.

In 2011 Pat helped establish a new educational trust devoted to accelerating improvement in Māori and Pasifika educational outcomes. Manaiakalani Educational Trust works around NZ in 90 schools with 20,000 tamariki to use high-end technology to accelerate learning improvement. His 2006 book, ‘Pakeha and the Treaty: why it’s our Treaty too’ won first prize in the first author, non-fiction section at the Montana Book Awards.

Paula Green is a poet, anthologist, blogger and children’s author. She has published fifteen books, including five for children, and runs two blogs Poetry Box and Poetry Shelf. In 2017 she received The Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry and was made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for Services to Poetry and Literature. In 2019 she published three books: Groovy Fish and Other Poems, The Track and Wild Honey: Reading NZ Women’s Poetry.

Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whatua) was born in Auckland in 1965. She is the author of the story collection Forbidden Cities (2008); the long-form essay On Coming Home (2015); and eight novels, including Rangatira (2011), winner of best work of fiction at both the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and Ngā Kupu Ora Maori Book Awards. Her most recent book is False River (2017), a collection of stories and essays around the subject of secret histories. She teaches creative writing at the University of Auckland, and is the founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature (www.anzliterature.com). Appointed an MZNM in the 2019 New Year Honours, she held the 2018 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. Photo credit Mike Brooke

Peter Sellars has gained international renown for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of artistic masterpieces and for collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists. He has staged operas at the Dutch National Opera, English National Opera, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opéra National de Paris and the Salzburg Festival among others.

Sellars' many collaborations with composer John Adams include Nixon in China, and most recently Girls of the Golden West at the San Francisco Opera. Desdemona, Sellars’ acclaimed collaboration with the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison and Malian composer and singer Rokia Traore has been presented in major cities in Europe, the U.S. and Australia.

Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals, the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival, and New Crowned Hope in 2006, a month-long festival in Vienna that celebrated Mozart’s 250th birth anniversary. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European culture, the Gish Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sellars has been awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize and been named Artist of the Year by Musical America.

I have published a short story collection called Everything We Hoped For and two novels I'm Working on a Building and The New Animals. My work has also appeared in journals here and overseas. I produce the podcast Better off Read where I talk to writers about books. I love to write about music, art and work. At the moment I'm working on a new novel about a group of women who start as one person and become two exact copies of themselves. Image: Ebony Lamb

James has nearly four decades’ experience in weather and climate research. His main field is large-scale climate variability and climate change, including the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds, and the impacts of climate variability and change on the Pacific, New Zealand and the Antarctic. James was a lead author for the last two Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is a Coordinating Lead Author for the new 6th IPCC Assessment. He was recently awarded the Prime Minister’s 2018 prize for Science Communication.

Rajorshi Chakraborti is an Indian-born novelist, essayist and short-story writer. He was born in 1977 in Calcutta, and grew up there and in Mumbai. Rajorshi is the author of six novels and a collection of short fiction. Or the Day Seizes You was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2006, one of the best-known prizes for English-language writing in India, and has appeared in a Spanish translation entitled La Vida Que Nos Lleva. Mumbai Rollercoaster received an honourable mention in the Children's Writing category of the Crossword Book Awards, 2011. The Man Who Would Not See was longlisted in the fiction section of the 2019 Ockham NZ Book Awards. Shakti, Rajorshi's latest novel, a supernatural mystery thriller, is due out in February 2020.

Rebecca Priestley is an associate professor at Victoria University of Wellington and director of the university’s Centre for Science in Society. Rebecca was science columnist for the NZ Listener for six years and is the author or editor of five previous books, the most recent of which is Dispatches from Continent Seven: An Anthology of Antarctic Science (2016). She is a winner of the Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize (2009) and the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize (2016). In 2018 she was made a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. She has an undergraduate degree in geology, a PhD in the history of science and an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters.

Rijula Das's debut novel A Death in Shonagachhi will be published in December 2019 by Picador India. She is a recipient of 2019 Micheal King Writer's Centre Residency in Auckland and the 2016 Dastaan Award for her short story Notes From A Passing. Her English translation of Nabarun Bhattacharya's novel Kangal Malshat is forthcoming from Seagull Books in Fall of 2020. Her short fiction has appeared in Newsroom and The Hindu. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing, and lives and works in New Zealand.

Rose Lu is a Wellington based writer. In 2018 she gained her Masters in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters and was awarded the Modern Letters Creative Nonfiction Prize. Her essay collection All Who Live on Islands is out November 2019 through VUP. She has been published in Sport, Pantograph Punch, Turbine Kapohau and Mimicry. Her undergraduate was in Mechatronics engineering and she has worked as a software developer since 2012. Photo credit Ebony Lamb

Kawerau born Sacha, is an award-winning children´s writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. She is the author of picture books Keys/Ngā Kī, The Marble Maker/Te Kaihanga Māpere, and the 2019 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, The Bomb/Te Pohū – all published by HUIA and illustrated by her partner in both books and life, Josh Morgan. Sacha is also involved in writing for children’s television. She has written for both The Kiddets and The Book Hungry Bears, two animated shows produced by Pukeko Pictures. Sacha loves lots of things including stop motion animation, daydreaming, biscuits, books, dancing, curly dogs, space noodles and woolly mammoths named Stanley.

Samer Nashef qualified as a doctor at the University of Bristol in 1980 and is a consultant cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge. He is a dedicated teacher and communicator and is recognised as a world-leading expert on risk and quality in surgical care. He is the author of The Naked Surgeon and a compiler of cryptic crosswords for The Guardian and the Financial Times.

Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. Her novels include Bright Young Things, The Seed Collectors, PopCo, The End of Mr.Y which was longlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, and Our Tragic Universe. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent.

Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. She was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a PhD in English from The University of Auckland and is now Associate Professor in the English Department, specialising in Pasifika literature. Her first poetry collection, Fast Talking PI, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2010. As Commonwealth Poet (2016), she performed for the Queen at Westminster Abbey. She became New Zealand’s Poet Laureate in 2017 and in 2019 was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry, literature and the Pacific community. Photo credit Tim Page

Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University. He has published in English, Russian and Ukrainian as well as having taught in Canada, Ukraine and the USA. His bestselling book Chernobyl: the History of a Tragedy won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction 2018. His latest book, Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: An Untold Story of World War II is published in October 2019.

Simone Kaho is a New Zealand / Tongan poet and a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters. She published her debut poetry collection, Lucky Punch, in 2016. Simone is noted for her poetry performance and writes for E-Tangata.co.nz.

Sophie Cunningham is the author of five books, City of Trees, Geography, Bird, Melbourne, and Warning: The Story of Cyclone Tracy. She is a former publisher and editor, was a co-founder of the Stella Prize and is now an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University’s Non/fiction Lab. In 2019 Sophie Cunningham was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her contributions to literature.

Tāmati Kruger, from the Ngāti Koura, Ngāti Rongo and Te Urewera hapū of Tūhoe, is a Māori advocate and social and political analyst who has dedicated his career to the development of his iwi. Tāmati was instrumental in securing the largest Treaty of Waitangi settlement to date for the Central North Island Iwi Collective, and was chief negotiator of the Tūhoe-Te Urewera Treaty of Waitangi Settlement, which included a Crown apology for historical grievances, a social service management plan for the Tūhoe rohe and a financial and commercial redress package. The settlement also included legislative changes to transfer Te Urewera National Park to its own separate legal entity, looked after by the Te Urewera Board, of which Tāmati is chair. He was a finalist in the 2012 New Zealander of the Year awards, Supreme Winner of the 2014 Marae Investigates Māori of the Year, and in 2015 was a recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award by Victoria University.

Tash Aw was born in Taipei, in the Republic of China, and brought up in Malaysia. He moved to England in his teens and now lives in London. He is the author of The Harmony Silk Factory, which was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Map of the Invisible World. His most recent novel, Five Star Billionaire, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013.

Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui/Ngāti Porou) is the author of Poūkahangatus, her first collection of verse, published by Victoria University Press in July 2018. She was the 2017 recipient of the Adam Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Tayi was born in Wellington in 1995.

Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal is an independent researcher and consultant, and a freelance composer, musician and storyteller. He is passionate about the ‘creative potential’ of indigenous knowledge and communities which explores through research, teaching and advising, and through music and story. Charles has written/edited six books and ten reports all on aspects of mātauranga Māori and iwi histories and traditions. He is also the founder and leader of whare tapere – iwi based ‘houses’ of storytelling, dance, games, music and other entertainments – which takes place in Hauraki. Previously he was a Director at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Director of Graduate Studies and Research at Te Wānanga-o-Raukawa, Ōtaki, and Professor of Indigenous Development and Director, Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, University of Auckland. Charles belongs to Marutūahu, Ngāti Raukawa and Ngā Puhi.

Manaia te maunga, Pataua me Ngunguru nga awa, Paratene te Manu te marae, Ngati Takapari me Ngati Korora nga hapu, Ngati Wai te iwi, ko Hori Parata me Moea Armstrong oku matua, ko Te Kaurinui Robert Parata toku ingoa.

Te Kaurinui returned from study at Victoria University in Wellington to apprentice under his father Hori Parata in the tikanga of working in te taiao and with taonga species, in particular tohorā, kiore and kauri. He also returned home to continue his learning under Te Warihi Hetaraka in whakairo at the Hihiaua Cultural Centre, where he has been learning since he was 13.

Tina Makereti writes essays, novels and short fiction. Her latest novel is The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke and, alongside Witi Ihimaera, she is co-editor of Black Marks on the White Page, an anthology that celebrates Māori and Pasifika writing. In 2016 her story ‘Black Milk’ won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Pacific region. Her first novel Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings won the 2014 Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Award for Fiction, also won by her short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa. Tina teaches creative writing and Oceanic literatures at Victoria University and has just completed a collection of personal essays, This Compulsion in Us.

Toby Manhire is the editor of The Spinoff and the editor of a Spinoff book, which is called The Spinoff Book, and is published in October. He was a staff journalist at The Guardian between 2000 – 2010.

Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Tommy was born and raised in Oakland, California. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He currently lives in California.

His first novel, There There was published by Alfred A. Knopf in June 2018 and rights have been sold in Brazil, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Korea, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK and Sweden. It was an instant New York Times bestseller and is under option to HBO as a TV series.

There There won the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the 2019 American Book Award. It was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2019, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It also won the John Leonard Award for Best First Book, the Anisfield-Wolf Fiction Prize 2019, and the Indie Choice Award for Best Adult Debut. There There was longlisted for the National Book Award 2018 and for the LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and nominated for the NCIBA Golden Poppy in Fiction, and it was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize in the UK.

Tracey Slaughter is the author of the highly acclaimed short story collection deleted scenes for lovers (VUP, 2016). Her first collection of poems and short stories, her body rises, was published by Random House (2005), and her novella The Longest Drink in Town by Pania Press (2015). Her short fiction has received numerous awards, including the international Bridport Prize 2014, a 2007 NZ Book Month Award, and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards in 2004 and 2001. She won the 2015 Landfall Essay Competition, and was the recipient of the 2010 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary. She teaches Creative Writing at Waikato University, and edits the journal Mayhem. Conventional Weapons is her first full poetry collection.

Veronika Meduna is an award-winning science writer and broadcaster, with a focus on climate change. She is currently the New Zealand editor for The Conversation, a not-for-profit media organisation providing evidence-based current affairs analysis. Before joining The Conversation, she hosted ‘Our Changing World’, a weekly science programme on RNZ. She has written five books on science, most recently Towards a Warming World, published by Bridget Williams Books, and Science on Ice: Discovering the Secrets of Antarctica, published by Auckland University Press. Veronika contributes to other publications in New Zealand and internationally, including the New Zealand Listener, New Zealand Geographic, New Scientist and Deutsche Welle.

Victor Rodger is an award-winning playwright of Samoan and Scottish heritage. His first play, Sons, debuted in 1995. Since then he has eight other plays produced, both nationally and internationally. He has held writing residencies at the University of Canterbury, the University of Hawaii and Otago University. He was the 2017 writer in residence at Victoria University of Wellington. Image: Raymond Sagapolutele.

Vincent O’Malley is a founding partner of HistoryWorks, a group of historians specialising in Treaty of Waitangi research. He is the author of a number of books on New Zealand history including The Meeting Place: Māori and Pākehā Encounters, 1642–1840 (Auckland University Press, 2012), which was shortlisted in the general non-fiction section at the New Zealand Post Book Awards in 2013, and Beyond the Imperial Frontier: The Contest for Colonial New Zealand (Bridget Williams Books, 2014).

Whiti Hereaka is an award-winning novelist and playwright of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa and Pākehā descent, based in Wellington. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (Scriptwriting) from the International Institute of Modern Letters. She is the author of three novels: The Graphologist’s Apprentice, the award-winning YA novel Bugs and Legacy. She is also co-editor, with Witi Ihimaera, of an anthology of Māori myths — Pūrākau. Whiti has been involved with Te Papa Tupu, an incubator programme for Māori writers, as a writer, a mentor and a judge. She is also a board member of the Māori Literature Trust and the Michael King Writers Centre.

Witi Ihimaera was the first Maori to publish both a book of short stories and a novel, and since then has published many notable novels and collections of short stories. His best-known novel is The Whale Rider, which was made into a hugely, internationally successful film in 2002.  The feature film White Lies was based on his novella Medicine Woman. And his novel Bulibasha, King of the Gypsies inspired the 2016 feature film Mahana. His first book, Pounamu, Pounamu, has not been out of print in the 40 years since publication. He has received numerous awards, including the premiere Maori arts award Te Tohutiketike a Te Waka Toi, the Wattie Book of the Year Award and the Montana Book Award, the inaugural Star of Oceania Award, University of Hawaii 2009, a laureate award from the New Zealand Arts Foundation 2009, the Toi Maori Maui Tiketike Award 2011, and the Premio Ostana International Award, presented to him in Italy 2010. In 2004 he became a Distinguished Companion of the Order of New Zealand (the equivalent of a knighthood).