Steve Braunias is a well-known writer who works for the New Zealand Herald, serves as books editor at Newsroom, and is life president of the Hamilton Press Club. He has won over 50 national writing awards and is the author of 10 books, including Civilisation (winner of the 2013 NZ Post award for best book of non-fiction), and The Scene of the Crime, published by HarperCollins in 2015. His 2021 book, Missing Persons, won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Non-Fiction.