Originally from Timaru where she grew up in a large working-class family, Trisha Hanifin has lived most of her adult life in Auckland. She has worked in adult education in a range of community, workplace and vocational organisations, specialising in adult literacy and foundation studies, developing programmes, teaching resources and professional development for tutors. Currently, she is a lecturer in bridging education at Unitec. A graduate of the Masters of Creative Writing programme at AUT (2010). Her writing has won several awards and been published in a number of literary journals and anthologies including Landfall, Bonsai: Best small stories in Aotearoa New Zealand, Flash Frontier and Turbine. In 2019 the unpublished manuscript of The Time Lizard's Archaeologist was awarded second place in the Ashton Wylie Mind Body Spirit awards. It is her first novel.