Paula Morris MNZM (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Manuhiri, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning novelist, story writer and essayist from Auckland. Her most recent books are False River (Penguin, 2017), a collection of her essays and stories; and Shining Land (Massey University Press, 2020), a collaboration with photographer Haru Sameshima about the writer Robin Hyde.

Her novel Rangatira (Penguin, 2011) won the fiction category of the New Zealand Post Book Awards in 2012, and the fiction prize of the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards the same year. She is the editor of the Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories (2009) and a co-editor (with Michelle Elvy and James Norcliffe) of Ko Aotearoa Tātou / We Are New Zealand (Otago University Press, 2020).

Paula is an associate professor at the University of Auckland, where she is the director of the Master of Creative Writing. She has mentored writers through the NZSA and the Te Papa Tupu Māori Writers Incubator, and also teaches writing at festivals, schools, universities and community programmes in New Zealand and overseas. Paula has been awarded numerous international residencies, and in 2019 was the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow. A former judge for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Pikihuia Awards and the ARA Historical Novel Prize, she has appeared at literary events in Australia, Canada, China, Europe, India, Japan, South Africa, the UK and the US, and at events on indigenous writing and publishing in Banff, London and Taipei.

Darryn Joseph (Ngāti Maniapoto) is an associate professor at Massey University, andhis quiet, unassuming, yet prolific contribution to reo Māori creativity in Aotearoa is impressive. He has published more than twenty books, and written numerous resources for immersion education, including textbooks, chapter books and journal articles.

He is a creative writer himself, past winner of the Huia (now Pikihuia) Short Story Awards for a work in te reo and the LIANZA Te Kura Pounamu Award for a book for younger readers in te reo. Darryn was a trustee on Storylines and is currently a board member of Read NZ Te Pou Muramura, and has served as a judge for the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards, the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults and the Storylines Te Kahurangi Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira Award.