Merren Tait is the award-winning author of The Good Life series, a humorous exploration of kick-arse women changing gears and seeking a quieter life in the less-well travelled places of a (fictional) New Zealand. Merren has lived a series of bookish lives. Her first incarnation was as a book-hungry child, then as a mildly pretentious English literature student. Her third life saw her teaching English to somewhat-willing high school students, and her fourth, sharing her love of books as a librarian. Now she has been reincarnated as a fiction creator. She is of Scottish, Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, English, Irish and German extraction and attributes her cross-cultural comedic flair to the enthusiastic interbreeding of her ancestors. Merren lives in a small house on a large piece of land near Raglan, New Zealand, where she dreams up fabulous names for her chickens, like Princess Layer.