Key Note Speakers
Donovan Bixley
Donovan Bixley ONZM is one of the top three bestselling authors in New Zealand, with books published in 31 countries, and multiple awards as an illustrator, an author, and as a book designer.
In 2017 Donovan was the recipient of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand’s Mallinson Rendel Illustrator’s Laureate Award. His books have twice been selected for the International Youth Library’s White Raven Award, which annually lists the top 200 children’s books in the world and he has twice won the Russell Clark award for Illustration. In 2021 he was named an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to New Zealand children’s books.
His work is nothing if not varied, spanning high–brow to low–brow and every brow in between — from illustrated biographies of Shakespeare, Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci to the hilarious hijinks of pussycats in planes in Paris in his Flying Furballs series, as well as more than 130 other books. He is known for his best-selling pre-school books such as The Wheels on the Bus and The Great Kiwi ABC Book, as well as his colourful and humorous retellings of the legends of Māui.
Some of the funny things he has illustrated include Shelob making Kentucky Fried Frodo, Mozart telling fart jokes, and a veloci-rapping gangsta dinosaur. Donovan grew up in Taupō and still lives beside the great lake. When not immersed in the world of picture books, Donovan is involved in local theatre. He plays saxophone in several bands and is the frontman for “Hot Tub”, a 15-piece funk band.
Kate De Goldi
Kate De Goldi writes fiction for all ages. Her most recent novel Eddy, Eddy continues her abiding preoccupation with the emotional strains and comedy of young people and their families. Kate spends a good deal of her working year teaching creative writing in schools throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. She has also created and taught courses on writing for children at Victoria and Massey Universities.
For twenty years Kate commentated on children’s books with Radio NZ presenter Kim Hill. Currently she talks about books of all kinds on RNZ’s Saturday programme. Since 2016 Kate has been co-editor and publisher (with Susan Paris) of Annual Ink, a children’s literature imprint best known for the Annuals, miscellanies of new work for young New Zealanders by writers and artists from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her novels for young adults include the multiple award-winners The Ten pm Question and Closed, Stranger.
Since 2016 Kate has been co-editor and publisher (with Susan Parris) of Annual Ink, a children’s literature imprint best known for the Annuals, miscellanies of new work for young New Zealanders by writers and illustrators around Aotearoa New Zealand.
In 2025 she was appointed Te Awhi Rito New Zealand Reading Ambassador, enabling her to further her commitment to promoting reading for pleasure across all ages. After thirty years in Wellington Kate now lives again in Otautahi Christchurch, the land and cityscape that has always fuelled her writing.
Workshop Presenters
Gavin Bishop ONZM (Tainui, Ngati Awa) is a highly acclaimed children’s book author and illustrator of more than 70 books, whose work ranges from original stories to retellings of Māori myths, European fairy stories, and nursery rhymes. Among the numerous fellowships and national book prizes awarded throughout his career, he has been nominated for the IBBY Hans Christian Andersen Medal, won the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal and the NZ Children’s Book Award’s supreme award, the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award, a record five times.
In 2009 the Storylines Gavin Bishop Award for Picture Book Illustration was established to acknowledge Gavin’s contribution to the writing and illustrating of children’s picture books in Aotearoa. In 2019 he won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (Non-fiction).He was the 2025 Honoured Writer at the Auckland Writers Festival, and his original artwork has been acquired for the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.
Gavin lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand. See more about him and his work at www.gavinbishop.com.
Li Chen was born in Beijing, China, and moved to New Zealand when she was five (with her parents, not as a solo child explorer, I don’t think that’s allowed). She studied architecture at university, but since self-publishing a number of comics in 2012 has been working as a full-time comic artist.
Detective Beans and the Case of the Missing Hat was her first graphic novel, since followed by three others in the Detective Beans series. When she’s not drawing, Li likes to hang out with her cats or go on really long walks. Oh, and she drinks a LOT of tea.
Giselle Clarkson is a freelance illustrator and comics artist. She studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, majoring in photography. After graduation she volunteered for conservation projects, and her first posters depicted New Zealand fish and native birds led to work for Forest and Bird’s children’s magazine, the New Zealand School Journal, newspapers, websites, and magazines, and a career in illustration. Her clients include RNZ, NZ Herald, Stuff, School Journal, Kiwibank, Auckland Zoo, Forest & Bird, AA, and more.
Among her books are her debut comic, The Flood, and the acclaimed book (illustrations also featuring on tea towels and posters) Common Biscuits and Slices of New Zealand. In 2023 she was nominated as Best Artist in the 2023 Voyager Media Awards, also winning at Arts Foundation Laureate Award. Her book The Observologist: A Handbook for Mounting Very Small Scientific Expeditions received a Storylines Notable Book Award and was also shortlisted for New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction in 2024. Her most recent work, Omnibird: An Avian Investigator’s Handbook, was named a Storylines Notable Non-Fiction Book for 2025.
Sasha Cotter is an award-winning children’s writer based in the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is known for winning the 2019 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year – The Bomb and Dazzlehands, which has been adapted into achildren’s ballet by the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
Other picture books include Keys (Ngā Kī), The Marble Maker (Te Kaihanga Māpere), and most recently A Guide to Rocks (He Taonga te Toka) – all published by Huia Publishers, translated by Kawata Teepa, and illustrated by her partner in both books and life, Josh Morgan. Together, Josh and Sacha form the creative duo, Cotter & Morgan, acclaimed for their lively storytelling and performances.
Sacha is also involved in writing and creating children’s television. She has written for The Kiddets, The Book Hungry Bears and helped create and develop Extreme Cake Sports for HEIHEI TVNZ. Sacha’s children’s poetry has been published in Roar, Squeak, Purr – A New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems.
Maria Gill is a children’s author and educator with extensive experience writing nonfiction and true stories for young readers. She has published books that blend educational content with compelling storytelling. Her work spans historical, biographical, environmental and adventure topics for children and young adults.
Maria is passionate about helping young readers engage with real-world stories while nurturing curiosity and critical thinking. Her book Anzac Heroes won the 2016 New Zealand Children’s and Young Adult Book of the Year Award and in 2020 she received the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal for lifetime achievement and outstanding services to children’s literature.
Swapna Haddow loves to write about boisterous animals that cause mayhem and is working hard to make sure mean cats, big-hearted little rabbits and worried dinosaurs find their place on the bookshelves. Friendship and humour are always at the heart of what she loves to write.
To date, she has sold over half a million books around the world and has been sold into over thirty territories. In 2022, Swapna was the University of Otago College of Education/Creative
New Zealand Children’s Writer in Residence. Her multiple publications since 2016 include early readers, anthologies, non-fiction and picture books, notably the Terrible Trio series, the Dave Pigeon series, the Reggie Rabbit series, and theBad Panda series.
Swapna lives in Dunedin with her husband and son, and their dog, Archie. When she’s not writing she is usually reading, dreaming about living on a boat or eating Jaffa Cakes.
Graci Kim is the award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of the Gifted Clans series (The Last Fallen Moon and the Last Fallen Realm) and the Slinger series (Dreamslinger, Royalslinger). Her books are published globally, translated into multiple languages, and have been optioned for film and television.
Inspired by Korean mythology and culture, Grace weaves stories that are full of adventure and hope, sprinkled with a healthy dose of magic. She is also a sought-after public speaker, having inspired many audiences across the world, whether on the TEDx stage, for corporates, or on international festival stages.
In a previous life, Graci was a New Zealand diplomat, a cooking show host, and once ran a business that turned children’s drawings into cuddly toys. A proud Korean Kiwi, she now lives with her husband and daughter in Tāmaki Makaurau. You can join her newsletter at gracikim.com and follow her on Instagram @GraciKimWrites.
Elizabeth Knox CNZM has published thirteen novels for both young adult and adults, three novellas and a collection of essays. The Vintner’s Luck (1998) won the Montana Deutz Medal, a place on the 1999 Orange Prize shortlist, and was adapted for the screen. For young adults her twinned novels Dreamhunter and Dreamquake were both highly acclaimed, with Dreamquake (2007) winning a prestigious Michael L. Printz Award in 2008 and inclusion in the American Library Association Best Book List in the same year. Her latest work is the young adult novel Kings of This World (2025).
Among her many awards are the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France, an Arts Foundation Laureate and the 2019 Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction. She won the 2019 Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction in 2019. Since 2016, Knox has taught creative writing at Victoria University.
Juliette MacIver is a popular visitor to schools, bringing energy, humour and boundless enthusiasm to her presentations at many schools in Aotearoa since 2011, and also yearly visits to schools in Australia.
The author of over 28 much-loved picture books and three middle-grade fiction titles, Juliette has twice won Best Picture Book at the New Zealand Children’s Book Awards for Duck Goes Meow and That’s Not A Hippopotamus!, and made the shortlist on four other occasions. Other awards include seven Storylines Notable Book Awards and international recognition in 2023 in the form of a White Raven for The Grizzled Grist Does Not Exist. In the United States, That’s Not a Hippopotamus! was shortlisted for the Florida Reading Association Awards. Her books have been translated into six languages, including Te Reo Māori, and are available in ten countries.
In 2023 she completed a Master of Arts degree in Linguistics, during which she won two academic prizes. She also holds two teaching qualifications.
Juliette lives with her husband and four children in a seaside suburb where she does a lot of yoga, soccer, and dancing with her children in the kitchen. She has a penchant for acquiring pointless skills: she can sing a folk song backwards, do the splits, and solve the Rubik’s cube blindfolded. She is convinced she will one day use these skills to save a life.
Claire Mabey is a New Zealand children’s writer, reviewer and commentator, currently books editor for The Spinoff. She is the founder of literary festival Verb Wellington and in 2020 received a Ghost Light Award at the Wellington Theatre Awards.
In 2024 her first book The Raven’s Eye Runaways was published by Allen & Unwin. She had received the 2022 Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writer’s Bursary to support her work on the novel, which went on to win the NZSA Best First Book Award at the 2025 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
Eileen Merriman was born in November 1974. She grew up in Wellington; studied at the University of Otago/Otago Medical School and received a PhD from Monash University in 2019. She is currently a haematologist at North Shore Hospital, Auckland.
Since her debut novel Pieces of You in 2017, Eileen has published eight further young award-winning adult novels, most recently the New Zealand Book Awards Young Adult winner, Catch a Falling Star. This novel also won the 2025 Booklover YA Award, the 2025 ASLA DANZA award (YA category) and a Storylines Notable Book YA award. For the Sunday Star-Times Short Story competition, she has been shortlisted three times and in 2018 was the runner-up.
Josh Morgan (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Pākehā) was born and raised in Manawatū. An award-winning illustrator, he lives on the Kāpiti Coast with the author Sacha Cotter, their wee family and a vast hoard of picture books. Together they form the amazing storytelling / song-writing / award-winning-picture-book-making team, Cotter & Morgan.
Their bilingual books with Huia Publishers have received numerous accolades, including the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, several Storylines Notable Book Awards, and international recognition from IBBY. Their work has also been adapted by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Royal New Zealand Ballet. In 2025 Josh was the recipient of the prestigious Arts Foundation Mallinson Rendel Illustration award.
By day Josh works as a visual designer. By night, he works as a freelance illustrator creating for books, TV, animation, School Journals, maps, a Māori Picture Dictionary, magazines, books covers and posters. He has proudly graduated from drawing in the back of his school exercise books and now draws silly pictures on meeting notes.
James Russell is a best-selling children’s author. He was born in Hamilton in 1972, and attended St Paul’s Collegiate, and then the University of Otago. For more than twelve years he worked as a journalist, columnist and editor, including for theNew Zealand Herald. He is now a full-time Auckland-based writer, and father of two sons.
James’s books are published in New Zealand, United States, Canada, China, Australia, the UK and the Czech Republic. They include his debut novel The Dragon Hunters (2012), which was followed by The Dragon Tamers, The Dragon Riders and The Dragon Defenders and the Children of the Rush series. In 2024 The Dragon Hunters won the Storylines Gaelyn Gordon Award for a much-loved book, and he has also won two Storylines Notable Book awards. James has also written two novels for adults – Mine (2021) and Lines (2022).
Melinda Szymanik writes picture books, short stories and novels for children and young adults. She also writes poetry for children and adults. Her picture book, The Were-Nana, won the New Zealand Post Children’s Choice Award in 2009, was a Storylines Notable Book in the same year, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Sakura Medal. Her fourth novel, A Winter’s Day in 1939, also a Storylines Notable Book (2014), won Librarian’s Choice at the 2014 LIANZA Awards. Her picture book Fuzzy Doodle (Scholastic 2016) was a 2017 Storylines Notable Book, a finalist in the 2017 NZCYA Book Awards and a 2017 White Ravens book.
Her most recent titles are the picture books Sun Shower/He Tārū Kahika (Scholastic, 2023), and BatKiwi and the Big Wet [BatKiwi #3] (Scholastic, 2025).
When she is not writing, Melinda likes reading, baking, going to the movies, and travelling. She has three grown-up children, a cat and a husband and lives in Mt Eden with a view of the mountain from her study.
Melinda teaches creative writing workshops for adults and children, visits schools through Storylines Story Tours and Read New Zealand’s Writers in Schools programme, and is the Northern representative and Vice President of the New Zealand Society of Authors.
Isobel Te Aho-White (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, Ngai Tahu) is a talented illustrator known for her captivating work that celebrates Aotearoa’s native plant life and explores themes of mana wahine, kaitiakitanga, te taiao, and ancestral healing. She earned her Diploma in Visual Arts from UCOL and a Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Illustration from Massey University.
Isobel’s illustration career took off in 2015 when she began freelancing and creating her own illustrated stories, which quickly garnered attention from publishers like School Journal and Huia. Her debut book, Santa’s Worst Christmas (2019), was nominated across multiple categories in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Since then her books have won multiple Storylines Notable Book Awards and featured as finalists for the New Zealand Picture Book and Junior Fiction Book Awards.
Isobel has contributed illustrations to notable works such as Witi Ihimaera’s’ Te Kōkōrangi /The Astromancer and The Maori Picture Dictionary/Te Papakupu Whakaahua by Josh Morgan, Margaret Sinclair and Ross Calman. Whiti: Colossal Squid of the Deep (2020), which won a prestigious Whitley Award for Best Children’s Book.
Her most recent works include Ngā Kupenga a Nanny Rina/Nanny Rina’s Amazing Nets by Quiane Matata-Sipu, A Ariā me te Atua o te Kūmara/ Ariā,The Kūmara God by Witi Ihimaera and Pipi and Pou and the Waves of Destruction by Tim Tīpene.
Beyond children’s book illustration, her artistic endeavours span graphic design, editorial work, and community mural projects, showcasing her versatility across various media including ink, watercolour, acrylic, oil, and gold leaf.
Zak
Waipara (Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Ruapani, Ngāti Kahungunu) is a leading New Zealand illustrator, animator, and academic whose work is deeply rooted in Māori storytelling and pūrākau (mythology). A former New Zealand Herald graphic artist and HOD of Animation at Animation College, Zak Waipara is now Digital Media Lecturer at AUT. He holds a PhD from AUT, his doctoral research focused on reimagining traditional Māori narratives through a graphic story trilogy to address contemporary issues.
He has also worked as a designer for Māori Television’s children’s show Miharo, illustrated comics and a range of books, and created animated music videos. Zak also created the design and artwork for New Zealand’s International Children’s Book Day 2007 poster, hosted that year by Storylines/New Zealand IBBY.
Among his books are The Stolen Stars of Matariki, text by Miriama Kamo, Māui – Suncatcher, text by Tim Tipene, and Ōtea: Rock of Ages 1.