Storylines Children’s Literature Charitable Trust of New Zealand | Te Whare Waituhi Tamariki o Aotearoa
Barbara Else was born in Invercargill in 1947. She has lived in Wellington, Auckland, Oamaru, Christchurch, San Diego and Dunedin. She has two daughters and four grandchildren. She is fond of gardening and cats.
Barbara is the author of six novels for adults and six for children. Her children’s book The Travelling Restaurant won the Esther Glen Medal in the 2012 LIANZA Awards and was the 2012 IBBY NZ Honour Book for Writing. She has also written plays and short stories and edited several anthologies of children’s stories. Her first novel The Warrior Queen was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards and her second, Gingerbread Husbands, for the Booksellers BookData Award. She has been Writer in Residence at Victoria University and has held a Creative New Zealand Scholarship in Letters. She is also a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for Services to Literature.
In 2016 she was Creative New Zealand/University of Otago Children’s Writer in Residence and was also awarded the Margaret Mahy Medal for Services to Children’s Literature. With her husband, author Chris Else, she runs an advisory service for writers.
