Tony Chapelle has had a professional life as a historian, mainly in schools and universities in the South Pacific. Over the past few decades he has concentrated on creative writing, and has published Original Sin, a book of short stories, many of them award-winning, and a sequence of four novels for adults- Merely a Girl, The Youngest Son, A Distant Belonging, and Kindred. He lives in Palmerston North with his daughter and granddaughters. NZ Booklovers wrote of Kindred, his most recent work- 'This is a beautiful book from start to finish. It is polished and perfectly weighted . . . . So sad, and so beautifully captured by the writer.' He has been short-listed and won a number of New Zealand short story competitions and was awarded a NZ Society of Authors mentorship with Sue McCauley. Maurice Gee described the character of Chapelle's first novel as 'tough, energetic, frustrated, vulnerable and not always admirable. A thoroughly believable young woman.'