Paula Morris, a novelist and short story writer of English and Maori descent, was born in New Zealand. For almost a decade she worked in the record business in London and New York. She now lives in New Orleans, where she teaches creative writing at Tulane University. Paula's first novel, Queen of Beauty, won best first work of fiction at the 2003 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Hibiscus Coast, a literary thriller set in Auckland and Shanghai, was published in 2005 and has been optioned for film. Her third novel, Trendy But Casual, was published by Penguin New Zealand in 2005. Paula's first short story collection, Forbidden Cities (2008) was a regional finalist in the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Ruined, her first YA novel, was published by Scholastic in 2009.

Donelle McKinley is a writer, editor and publisher working internationally. She began her professional life in the wonderful world of rare and collectable books, and moved on to roles at McGraw Hill and Otago University Press. Beyond publishing, she has worked in the digital space for the love of cultural heritage, the arts, and higher education. Donelle holds qualifications in English Literature, Art History, Information Studies, and Publishing, and studied Book History at New College, University of Oxford. She contributed to the anthology Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child-adjacent (Massey University Press, 2024) and is author of The Integrity Cure (Thorndon Press, 2025).

Linda Collins has a new book out (April, 2021), a poetry collection called Sign Language for the Death of Reason, edited by Lambda shortlister Tania De Rozario. It is published by Math Paper Press who sell it through their online bookstore @booksactually. In New Zealand, the distributor is bayhillbooks.co.nz. Linda is doing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She already has one MA in Creative Writing, during which she wrote her best-selling memoir, Loss Adjustment. That MA was with the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) at Victoria University, New Zealand, 2017. Her creative non-fiction, essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in Turbine, Swamp Living, The Fib Review, The Cordite Poetry Review, Oyster River Pages, Literary Mama, Fan the Flames (UEA Eggbox zine), and The Freerange Journal. She was shortlisted for the Hachette Australia Trans-Tasman mentorship, longlisted for a NZ flash fiction award and received an Honourable Mention in a Glimmer Train contest. Loss Adjustment was written three years after her daughter had died, and is a work of creative non-fiction. In fiction, she has short stories in A View of Stars: Stories of Love (Marshall-Cavdendish) and Call and Response 2 (Math Paper Press).

Sam has been drawing comics since he was a little girl. He is passionate about telling stories that celebrate the rich depth and diversity of our communities. He is interested in examining the importance of storytelling for communities; we are empowered by telling our own stories, and, in turn, we can be empowered by the stories of others. He lives with his partner and their cat in Auckland, New Zealand. You can read more of his comics at: www.roostertailscomic.com

Henrietta (they/them) is a Pākehā writer and activist, born and based in Te Whanganui a Tara, Wellington where they live with a fellow disabled artist and a cat. When they were little, writing about disability felt too ordinary and mundane so they wrote about magic cats, butterfly sandwiches, and bands of thieves instead. They began writing about real life in 2009. Etta writes in a number of forms. They have had plays staged here and overseas and poetry published in Aotearoa and Australia. During their studies at Te Herenga Waka (Victoria)University, they established the Salient column Token Cripple with a focus on disability rights.