New Zealand Biographies

A powerful, moving, and darkly honest memoir. Sue Watson grew up in a perfect, loving nuclear family, a white-picket fence, quarter acre paradise. But all was not quite as it seemed. Sue and her sister were adopted, and one day when Sue, as a young woman, was studying in Wellington, she received a letter from her birth mother, Elizabeth Winters....

Descending Fire is a powerful and moving glimpse into the writing journey of the late Sherryl Jordan, one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most beloved YA and children's authors. Author of The Raging Quiet, Winter of Fire and Rocco, among others, Sherryl's writing journey was both fraught and awe-inspiring. Her story is one of resilience, faith, dogged determination and divine inspiration....

A memoir from award-winning writer and inspirational speaker Tim Tipene. Tim founded the Warrior Kids programme 22 years ago. Himself the product of rape, he spent a miserable childhood in which he was abused by both his birth and foster families. His courses now empower families and children, and this memoir is a recollection of his life, raised in violence....

The Teine Pasifika Wellbeing Journal is designed to help Pasifika girls feel SEEN, HEARD and VALUED. The Teine Pasifika Wellbeing Journal is a culturally safe space for our teine Pasifika to reflect, explore and strengthen their wellbeing through engaging and interactive activities and writing tasks. Culture, identity and wellbeing are interconnected, and this is why Mila's My Pasifika Wellbeing Journal...

The Tama Pasifika Wellbeing Journal is designed to help our tama Pasifika connect back to themselves, strengthen their talanoa skills and learn how to heal along their wellbeing journey. It provides a culturally safe space for our tama Pasifika to reflect, explore and strengthen their wellbeing through engaging and interactive activities and writing tasks. Culture, identity and wellbeing are interconnected,...

Home-grown literary heroes, established contemporary authors, and award-winning emerging writers have been brought together in this new short story collection. Fifteen stories have been selected specifically for New Zealand/Aotearoa secondary English classroom teaching, with stories exploring ideas about identity, activism awareness, coming-of-age, society, and family. When referencing the title, use Lit.

Ko e pongipongi fo'ou is the Tongan version of A New Dawn Story. In this book, Emeli Sione shares her Dawn Raid story to help us understand the real impact of this dark time in our history. With valuable lessons for all New Zealanders, A New Dawn provides us with hope on our journeys of equality, justice, and healing as...

The I am Pasifika Wellbeing Journal is designed to be a space for Pasifika to explore and record information to support cultural identity journeys. Our dream is to have a generation of tamaiti and families who understand the power of being Pasifika and to continue our proud navigator legacy into the future. Culture, identity and wellbeing are interconnected, and this...

The revealing sequel to the award-winning memoir Maori Boy. This is the second volume of memoir by this remarkable Maori writer and of the living myths that inspired him at the beginning of his career. Look at him, the young man on the cover. The year is 1972, he is 28, his first book is about to be published, and...

Lemons may make lemonade, their blossoms may smell sweet, but bite beneath their raw skins and they’re impossible to eat. Such is Barbara Docherty’s memoir, Secrets and Lemons. “My father said I’d talk to anything, even a cornflake…” And indeed, Barbara strongly conveys her zest for living and adventure, her ability to connect with people, and talent for recognising opportunity...

Take the world anywhere you want with this brilliant Philip's Atlas of Aotearoa New Zealand and the World and its specialised section on Aotearoa New Zealand. All the world maps are up-to-date and the NZ statistical material is the latest available. Includes: 16 pages of Aotearoa New Zealand maps and graphs; Statistical information presented in an accessible graphical format; Page...

An epic journey from New Zealand to Spain, celebrating the enduring romance of travel by train. The journey of The Antipodean Express takes in 89 days of travel, on 33 trains, through 19 countries. It begins in New Zealand's North Island, weaves past the volcanoes of Java, through East Asia and on into Europe. From hilarious miscommunications in China to...

'This wryly affectionate portrait of dogs and their people is a tail-thumpingly delightful read.' Jane Clifton 'So charming and funny and sincere - this is dog lit at its best.' Steve Braunias 'Mike White, for decades one of the country's most persuasive journalists, makes a case here as irrefutable as it is moving: throw a stick, make a dog happy,...

An inspiring guide to acquiring, training, and riding your very own wild horse. Wild Kaimanawas set her on a journey of self-discovery, teaching her not only the language of horses, but the powerful impact they can have on our lives. In Taming the Wild, Kelly Wilson shares her training philosophies for creating happy horses that love their lives among humans....

The if of death is certain. The when is unknown. It is the why that really gets people's interest... From a rare and deadly amniotic avalanche to a victim of roasted peanuts... The bestselling author of The Cause of Death and The Quick and the Dead returns with more stranger-than-fiction stories of death, disease, and murder—as well as new perspectives...

A wonderful collection of stories and memoir from childhood. Childhood is at times joyful, at times traumatic. In this anthology, twenty-six distinguished New Zealand writers evoke memories of their early years, in fiction and memoir. Their stories and memoirs resonate with love and betrayal, friendship and disloyalty, elation and anxiety. The writing features parents and teachers, peers, siblings and other...

In the 1980s, Maurice Shadbolt began to research New Zealand's part in the tragic Gallipoli campaign of 1915—research which was to lead to his stage play Once on Chunuk Bair, a television documentary, and this book Voices of Gallipoli. Voices of Gallipoli is compelling testimony to a pilgrimage which began and ended with visits to Turkey's haunted Gallipoli peninsula where...

In February 1945, with no veterinary training available in New Zealand, Graham Wallace braved a German raider in the Tasman Sea to begin his studies in Sydney. The potentially explosive journey set the tone for a colourful life working with big farm animals in rural New Zealand as a travelling vet, later specialising in disease prevention and vaccine creation. Vet...

In a valley along a highway, four consecutive towns stand, as if someone had once skipped a stone. Each town takes its English name after a British man of the 1800s and offers free Wi-Fi. The landscape features sun-dried mountains to the east and clouds clinging to damp ones in the west. Are we safe in the middle? Are we...

Towards Compostela by Catharina van Bohemen recounts her pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in 1998. During this time, Jenny Shipley was New Zealand's prime minister, Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky was exposed, the Good Friday Agreement was signed in Northern Ireland, and the Russian rouble nearly collapsed. Catharina's own life mirrored this upheaval; her marriage had ended, and...

For London-based writer Kirsty Gunn, returning to the city of her birth to spend a winter in a tiny colonial cottage in Thorndon is an exciting opportunity to walk the very streets and hills that Katherine Mansfield left behind on her departure from New Zealand, but later longed to revisit. In this exquisitely written notebook (My Katherine Mansfield Project), Gunn...

This book is about my making sense here, of my becoming and being Pakeha. Every Pakeha becomes a Pakeha in their own way, finding her or his own meaning for that Maori word. This is the story of what it means to me. I have written this book for Pakeha—and other New Zealanders—curious about their sense of identity and about...

I began to pull the threads of my experience back together. Instead of divergent stories about public failure, private torment, and postnatal distress, I started telling myself a united story: the truth, or as close as I could get to it. A Rhodes scholar and former Green MP, Holly Walker tells the story of how she became one of New...

The abduction and murder of teenager Jane Furlong is one of New Zealand's most enduring mysteries. Jane was 17 when she disappeared from Auckland's Karangahape Road in 1993. She was a girlfriend, a daughter, a sex worker, and the mother of a four-and-a-half-month-old baby. Her disappearance made sensational headlines across the country, particularly when it was linked to the sex...

"When I entered Parliament in 1975, I joined a very small club: although women in New Zealand won the right to vote in 1893, only a tiny handful had been Members of Parliament in the hundred or so years that followed. I was number 15!" In 1975, Marilyn Waring was elected to the New Zealand Parliament as the MP for...

The connection between a colony and its founder, centre and margin, is always paradoxical. Where once Britain sent colonists out into the world, now the descendants of those colonists return to interrogate the centre. The Expatriates is a book about four of these returners: Harold Williams, journalist, linguist, Foreign Editor of The Times; Ronald Syme, spy, libertarian, historian of ancient...

Dorothy Buchanan is a prolific, much loved and much awarded composer, who pioneered the composer-in-schools scheme and has been a force in music and music-making in Aotearoa for over half a century.

Mo tatou, a, mo ka uri a muri ake nei. For us and our children after us. Tangata Ngai Tahu, Volume Two remembers and celebrates the rich and diverse lives of the people of Ngai Tahu. Spanning time, geography, and kaupapa, some fifty biographies bring Ngai Tahu history into the present. The people in the book have contributed to their...

Mo tatou, a, mo ka uri a muri ake nei. For us and our children after us. Tangata Ngai Tahu, Volume Two remembers and celebrates the rich and diverse lives of the people of Ngai Tahu. Spanning time, geography and kaupapa, some fifty biographies bring Ngai Tahu history into the present. The people in the book have contributed to their...

Emerita Professor Jan Jordan: successful academic and passionate advocate for survivors of sexual violence. Janet Robinson: despairing cutter and overdoser, excluded from university 'for failure to make satisfactory progress'. Snorkelling the Abyss explores the two worlds of one woman and the apparently unnavigable void between them. With searing honesty, Jan Jordan shows how she fought to free herself from an...

Since 2002, 40 writers from France and Aotearoa New Zealand have made an historic cottage on a steep street in Thorndon their home while they write, the bush of Te Ahumairangi behind them and Wellington Harbour in front. To celebrate 20 creative years, the Randell Cottage Writers Trust has commissioned Room to Write, asking the writers for contributions that spring...

For novelist Stephanie Johnson, her relationship with Australia and Australians has been an ambivalent one. She has lived there for periods in her life, and her first book, a collection of short stories, was actually published in Australia. She was described then as a young Australian writer, something she says she agreed to 'for reasons that are complex and some...

Acknowledged internationally for his ground-breaking scientific research in the field of magnetic resonance, Sir Paul Callaghan was a scientist and visionary with a rare gift for promoting science to a wide audience. Paul Callaghan: Luminous Moments brings together some of his most significant writing, offering eloquent narratives spanning science, fatherhood, illness and life that will endure in this country's literature....

Albert Wendt crosses into new and deeply personal territory in this stirring BWB Text. Returning to his boyhood in the Vaipe, a suburb of Apia in Samoa, sees Wendt confront elemental questions: Is the Vaipe he has created in his stories, poetry and novels really the Vaipe that existed and exists in real life? Or is it real only in...

Between the 1980s and 2015, Dave Vass became one of New Zealand's leading mountaineers. In Not Set in Stone, he recounts the beginning of his outdoor life caving and rafting, before turning to climbing, first around Arthur's Pass, and then at Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. A move to Wanaka saw him focused on climbing hard routes in Mount Aspiring National...

No One Home tells the story of Keith Westwater growing up in 1950s New Zealand. At age seven, he loses his mother to a botched operation and, with her death, loses a place to call home. Therefore, Keith and his brother take to the road with a gambling father, staying with relatives when their father cannot have them and enduring...

My Three Rivers is a vivid account of the challenges and satisfactions of rural life in the first part of twentieth-century New Zealand, on land defined by unpredictable rivers, few reliable roads, and no bridges. With a sharp and often humorous eye, Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe captures the community at Thames, beside the mouth of the Waihou, where the Bagnall family...

Migrant Journeys is about driving taxis in New Zealand cities—and it is about much more than that. Here fourteen migrant taxi drivers talk about their lives—where they came from and why they came here, what it was like to settle in New Zealand, how they got into the taxi business, and how they see this country and its people. Some...

Born in Hamilton in 1950 with a penchant for drama, Anne Manchester was perplexed by her remote mother and frustrated by the strictures of a post-war upbringing. She launched into university life at full tilt, demonstrating against the Vietnam War, waitressing in Suzy's Coffee Lounge, losing her virginity to a gay man, taking part in university revues with Roger Hall,...

Light and Reflections

This showcase of five lively, smart, thoughtful writers promises to be a valuable and very readable contribution to New Zealand's cultural, social and political discourse. It is housed within a small, covetable, high-quality hardcover book complete with colour illustrations. Life On Volcanoes offers a unique perspective through the voices of Tze Ming Mok, Tui Gordon, Tulia Thompson, Ruth Larson, and...

Maurice Shadbolt believed that New Zealanders should tell their own stories, cherish their own myths, and believe in their own big lies before they could stand upright in a post-colonial world. Through his fiction, non-fiction, and international journalism, he played a leading role in projecting New Zealand to the world throughout the second half of the 20th century. His overseas...

Iris and Me

Isaac Coates was an Englishman who lived in Wellington and Nelson between 1841 and 1845. During that time, he painted watercolour portraits of 58 Māori from Nelson, Marlborough, Wellington, Waikanae, and Kapiti. Some of these portraits have been well-known for nearly 180 years, although their creator was not definitively identified until 2000. The discovery in 2007 of a Coates book...

Scrape away the barnacles, re-examine the origins of Christian faith, take full account of modern knowledge and experience, open your mind to new possibilities, rethink what faith can mean in this new millennium – that’s the plea Ian Harris makes in this challenge to reset faith within today’s secular frame. New World, New God showed how this reset can bring...

Compelling and revealing, the often hectic and sometimes poignant tale of the life and times of New Zealand's foremost storyteller. From the Edge of the Sky by Maurice Shadbolt offers readers a captivating journey into the life of a celebrated writer, exploring both the chaos and the moments of deep emotion that shape the experiences of a storyteller at the...

Established and award-winning authors sit alongside some lively 'fresh ink' from previously unpublished voices. The third in this popular series, Fresh Ink 2021 is an exciting anthology presenting new work from a diverse group of New Zealand writers, poets, and artists as they reflect upon the Covid-19 pandemic. Forty-seven artists and writers have contributed to the anthology. Included are celebrated...

Fresh Ink 2019 is an anthology of short stories, extracts from novels, poetry, and artwork. It features works from established and respected New Zealand writers, as well as some lively 'fresh ink' from previously unpublished literary voices.

One of the first writers to speak with an authentic New Zealand voice, Blanche Edith Baughan (1870–1958) was known as a poet and local travel writer. Enough Horizon tells Blanche’s story, her successes and her struggles: a troubled upbringing with a mentally ill mother in London, and her emigration to New Zealand in 1900, where she embraced the freedom it...

When Kristen's father, Don, was diagnosed with dementia, the signs had been there for five years. He'd gone out less and less, given up driving and table tennis, which he'd played all his life, and relied increasingly on his wife, Penny. Conversations went in circles. Kristen started trying different ways to get her dad back—not the dad who could recall...

Comrade by Cybele Locke delves into the life of Bill Andersen, one of the most significant figures in New Zealand's trade union movement in the later twentieth century. This biography uncovers the intricate relationships between communism and working-class trade unionism during World War Two and the ensuing decades. Beginning with Bill's experiences as a merchant seaman during World War Two,...

In 1979, teenager Olive Jones was one of a group of hippies, idealists, and subsistence farmers that set up an alternative community on a farm in the Motueka Valley near Nelson. Influenced by the countercultural movement sweeping the country during the 1970s and 80s, they were part of a widespread interest in communal living, a generation of young people inspired...

Bernard Brown lived through WWII in Suffolk, England, where he was strafed by bullets from a German Dornier aeroplane; dived to fetch sculpturing clay for a young Lucian Freud; went to school with the notorious gangsters, the Kray brothers; and had a close encounter with the Jimmy Savile of the era, 'Uncle Mac' at the BBC. As a young man,...

Robbie Burton is a tramper, mountain-lover and book publisher, who has had a life-long infatuation with the wild places of New Zealand. In this memoir, he recalls a childhood in which the natural world played a central part and led to a youthful obsession with tramping, skiing and mountaineering. In his long career at the helm of Potton & Burton,...

Russell Tregonning finished his fifty-year career in medicine as one of New Zealand's leading orthopaedic surgeons and as a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Otago School of Medicine. This memoir takes the reader through his journey from medical student to orthopaedic surgeon - from introducing pioneering techniques in reconstructive surgery, to personal struggles with depression, medical mishaps, run-ins with senior...

Frank Edwards has one of those faces Kiwis recognise. A working actor and writer for over fifty years, he's been part of projects like blockbuster movies King Kong and The Lord of the Rings, iconic TV shows Close to Home and Shortland Street, and notable New Zealand plays Foreskin's Lament and The Learner's Stand. With a cast of supporting characters...

This is the story of a quest I began three decades ago—the search for my Chinese identity. The path I travelled was not linear, and the years brought pain as well as joy. But, while this is a narrative about being Chinese and also a New Zealander, I know that the search for purpose and meaning in life is universal....

The myriad of the living in all of their many forms, defunct, mutant, revenant or otherwise; traversing memory's infinite field. Barefoot Years by Martin Edmond is a memoir in which the author attempts to re-inhabit the lost domain of childhood. It is evocative and poignant, detailed yet fragmentary, full of half-forgotten things: what may be recovered also reveals that which...

Awa Book Of New Zealand Sports Writing, The by Harry Ricketts captures the essence of a sports-loving nation with a collection of 80 superb pieces of sports writing. Featuring contributions from many of New Zealand's most acclaimed journalists, novelists, biographers, essayists, and poets, this compilation spans a diverse range of sports—from surfing to cycling, angling to archery, and running to...

Astride a Fierce Wind is a story of the life of an immigrant and what it means to leave one home behind and cross the world to find another. But it is also the story of a life of a woman who faces huge difficulties and yet chooses instead to see beauty and strength and freedom and love. Huberta Hellendoorn's...

Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters: The New Zealand Story by Penelope Jackson documents New Zealand's most scandalous art crimes of the last 100 years—some notorious but others discreetly covered up by embarrassed owners and institutions. These crimes include a near-life-sized nude mysteriously stolen from Christchurch's McDougall Art Gallery, never to be seen again; an international court battle concerning the ownership...

Life in the remote community of Te Kuaka.

In 2015, Natalie Yule Yeoman was diagnosed with breast cancer. A Maze of Grace is the story of her response to the illness over a year, through diary entries, correspondence, poems, medical reports and family writings. By cultivating her inner resources, including her Christian belief and disarming sense of humour, Natalie was able to find new ways of coping with...

A Feeling for Food began as a letter to two sons leaving home, giving them the recipes of the food they'd grown up with so they could feed themselves. However, Lis Cowey soon realised she was giving them another kind of nourishment that was all about who they were, where they'd come from, and the adventures awaiting them. For behind...

Margaret Wilson has always lived a political life. From her days as a child growing up in the Waikato in a Catholic family attuned to fairness, to being an unlikely law student in the 1960s in a class with a few other women, and an emerging socialist feminist who read radical texts and attended women's conventions, her key concerns became...

'These essays about love, loss, and memories of night voyages with her dad glow from within, like phosphorescence on the sea. Just what we need in times like these.' - Diana Wichtel 'Evocative, lyrical, surprising, Times Like These is built from a heart that bursts out of every page.' - Toby Manhire Childhood, family, and death; anxiety and release; grief...

Brad Smeele's thrill-seeking, fast-paced life as a professional wakeboarder came to an abrupt halt when an accident caused him to become a quadriplegic. Wakeboarding is like waterskiing, but on a single board with aerial tricks added in. It's a freestyle sport for super-athletic adrenalin junkies. Brad was at the peak of his career, pushing the sport to new heights and...

When Wendyl Nissen's mother was suffering with Alzheimer's, she told some extraordinary stories about her background that Wendyl had never heard before. Determined to get to the bottom of these family secrets, Wendyl found some wild and intriguing stories of loss, grief and love. She uncovered new relatives, deeply sad adoptions, harsh parenting, complex marriages and a few rogues. These...

Jess Quinn is, in her own words, quite literally a walking miracle. Her body has been completely restructured so that she could survive an aggressive cancer. Jess's leg was amputated just before her ninth birthday, and she has had to adapt to living with a prosthetic leg. The challenges Jess has faced ever since have given her a unique outlook....

In this time of great uncertainty, Wendyl focuses on turning to your garden, animals, books, loved ones, and, importantly, looking after yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally so that you have the means to give to others. Beautifully illustrated with stunning photographs from prize-winning photographer Jane Ussher, Natural Care includes many tips and ideas as well as great recipes to try....

Christopher Finlayson is a lawyer and was a senior minister in the John Key-led National government, serving as Attorney-General, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, and Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, as well as the Minister responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau and Minister in Charge of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, New Zealand's two main intelligence...

Anna Bibby owned a successful art gallery in New Zealand until one day, on holiday in France, she bought a falling-down house in a picturesque medieval village. So began the process of renovating her beautiful old house which, of course, wasn't without its issues and roadblocks. Anna didn't speak the language, she didn't know anyone, and her understanding of French...

In this clever, witty and detailed memoir, Hon Sir Michael Cullen describes his lengthy political career, including his major economic policies. Among the many highlights are the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, also known as the Cullen Fund; Kiwisaver; and the Working for Families package, which sought to reduce inequalities. He also had the unenviable task of steering the economy through...

Drawn Out is a hilarious, heartbreaking, heart-warming account of Tom Scott's tragicomic childhood, his manic student-newspaper days, his turbulent years stumbling through the corridors of power, his fallings out with prime ministers, his collaborations with comic legends John Clarke, A.K. Grant and Murray Ball, his travels to the ends of the earth with his close friend Ed Hillary, and more......

'Jo Morgan is a woman for our times. Fearless, determined, resourceful. An inspiring story of courage, vividly told with wry humour. A thoroughly engaging read.' JUDY BAILEY Mountaineer, adventurer, avid motorcyclist, and constant traveller, Jo Morgan has lived an extraordinary life. The youngest of eight children, Jo was brought up largely by her mum after her father died when she...

For the first time, Annabel Langbein, New Zealand's most popular cookbook author, writes about her remarkable life and how food has shaped it, highlighting some of the recipes that have resonated most strongly with her over the years. From her childhood fascination with cooking to a teenage flirtation as a Maoist hippie, to possum trapping and living off the land...

A Gentle Radical by Gareth Hughes tells the story of Jeanette Fitzsimons—a visionary, pioneer, and radical who challenged the dominant political paradigms held by National and Labour. This narrative chronicles her journey against the political mainstream and her role as co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand from 1995 to 2009, where she served as a member of...