Jack Remiel Cottrell (Ngāti Rangi) was born in Wellington, and moved around a great deal before eventually settling in Auckland, where he works as a freelance copywriter. He was shortlisted in the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards for Best Short Story (for work first published in Flash Frontier’s Speculative Fiction issue), and his work features in Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand and the 2021 Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy. Jack specialises in writing flash fiction which reflect the weirdness of the times we live in. His debut collection of flash fiction, Ten Acceptable Acts of Arson and other very short stories, was published in 2021 by Canterbury University Press. When not writing, Jack referees a lot of rugby and forgets to update his website.

Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and manuscript assessor based in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021), and she has recently co-edited, among others, the anthologies Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand (OUP 2020), Breach of All Size: Small stories on Ulysses, love and Venice (The Cuba Press, 2022) and the forthcoming micro anthology featuring ‘languages of Aotearoa’ Founder of National Flash Fiction Day and Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, Michelle also teaches online at 52|250 A Year of Writing. More at michelleelvy.com

Nod Ghosh graduated from the Hagley Writers’ Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand. Nod was previously associate editor for Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, the online NZ publication founded by Michelle Elvy. Truth Serum Press has published the following novellae-in-flash: The Crazed Wind (2018), Filthy Sucre (2020), Toy Train (2021). Throw A Seven is forthcoming through Reflex Press in 2022. Nod has judged the Bath Flash Fiction Award, read for SmokeLong Quarterly and UK National Flash Fiction Day. Further details: http://www.nodghosh.com/about/

Caroline Greene @cgreene100 is an English language teacher who’s also worked as an editor and features writer, and as a fund-raiser in the theatre. Her work has been performed at Liars League, and appeared in the Fish Anthology 2011, Flash Magazine, Splonk and @FlashBackFiction, as well as anthologies from Bath Flash Fiction (Things Left and Found by the Side of the Road), the National Flash Fiction Day (And We Pass Through), Flash Fiction Festival 3 and Retreat West (How to Hold an Umbrella).

Jude Higgins is writer, tutor and writing events organiser. Her flash fictions have been published widely and she is currently writing a novel in flash, She organises the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the Bath Novella in Flash Award, and directs Ad Hoc Fiction, which has published over 50 books since 2016, with a focus on short short fiction. She also directs the in-person and online  Flash  Fiction festival in the U.K. judehiggins.com @judehwriter

Emma Neale is the author of six novels and six collections of poetry. Her most recent novel, Billy Bird (2016) was short-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham NZ Book Awards and long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award. Emma has received a number of literary fellowships, residencies and awards, including the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a Distinguished Contribution to New Zealand Poetry 2020. The Pink Jumpsuit, her first collection of short stories, was long-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her novel Fosterling is in script development with Sandy Lane Productions, under the title Skin. Emma lives and works in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, where she works as a freelance editor.

Tracey Slaughter is the author of Devil’s Trumpet (2021), deleted scenes for lovers (2016), Conventional Weapons (poems, 2019), The Longest Drink in Town (2015) and her body rises (poems and short stories, 2005). Her novella if there is no shelter was published in the UK by Ad Hoc in 2020. She has received numerous awards, including the international Fish Short Story Prize 2020, the Bridport Prize 2014 and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards in 2004 and 2001. She won the 2015 Landfall Essay Competition and was the recipient of the 2010 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato, and edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry NZ.

Alex Reece Abbott is a New Zealand-Irish writer across genres and forms, published in Best Small Fictions, Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand and Heron (Katherine Mansfield Society), among others. A Penguin Random House WriteNow finalist, often shortlisted, her work has won the Irish Novel Fair, Northern Crime, Arvon and HG Wells prizes. www.alexreeceabbott.info  @AlexReeceAbbott

Diane Brown is a novelist, memoirist, and poet who runs Creative Writing Dunedin. Her publications include two collections of poetry, Before The Divorce We Go To Disneyland and Learning to Lie Together; a novel, If The Tongue Fits, and verse novel, Eight Stages of Grace, a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers, a prose/poetic memoir, Here Comes Another Vital Moment and a poetic family memoir, Taking My Mother To The Opera. Her latest book is a long poetic narrative, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child, Otago University Press, 2020. In 2013 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to writing and education. She lives in Dunedin with her husband, author Philip Temple.

Catherine Chiarella Domonkos’ recent short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Flash Frontier, Heavy Feather Review, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine and other literary places. It will be anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2022. She lives in Greenwich Village, NYC.

Tim Jones is a poet, author and anthologist who lives in Wellington. He was awarded the New Zealand Society of Authors Te Puni Kaituhi O Aotearoa Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. His recent books include poetry collection New Sea Land (Mākaro Press, 2016) and climate fiction novella Where We Land (The Cuba Press, 2019). He edited the 2021 New Zealand Poetry Society anthology Kissing a Ghost and will also be editing the 2022 NZPS anthology.

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write, and ended up in Ghana running a bar. Praised by Hilary Mantel, her short story collection The Cartography of Others was a People’s Book Prize (UK) finalist and winner of the Eyelands International Book Award (Greece). Pelt and Other Stories was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Award and a Hudson Prize semi-finalist. Her most recent collection, Love Stories for Hectic People (2021) won the Saboteur Award in the short story category. Catherine is Flash Fiction Editor for Litro Magazine UK. More here.

Poet, novelist, editor and literary odd-job man, James Norcliffe has published ten collections of poetry, more than a dozen novels for young people and, earlier this year, a novel, The Frog Prince, with Penguin Random. Later this year Quentin Wilson Publishing will bring out a junior novel The Crate, a ghost story set on New Zealand’s West Coast. James is an editor of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and Central Committee member of National Flash Fiction Day. He also co-edited Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand (Canterbury University Press, 2018).

Matt Potter lives in Adelaide and used to keep part of his psyche in Berlin. He is the founder of Bequem Publishing. By day he has been a social worker, an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher, a tutor and at the moment, an early childhood educator. He is the author of Hamburgers and Berliners and other courses in between (travel memoir); Based on True Stories and Vestal Aversion (story collections); All you need is a whiteboard, a marker and this book (ESL teaching resources); and On the Bitch (a novella).

Tina Shaw is a New Zealand author of more than 20 publications for children, young adults and general readership. Her writing has taken her to Auckland, Christchurch, Berlin and even Hamilton – where she was Writer-In-Residence at the University of Waikato. Shaw’s novel Ursa won the 2018 Storylines Tessa Duder Award for an unpublished manuscript and went on to win a Storylines Notable Book Award and be a finalist in the 2020 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Her recent novel, Ephemera, is set on the Waikato River, a location she knows well from growing up in the Waikato. A member of NZAMA, she works as a manuscript assessor, tutor of creative writing and editor of the NZSA quarterly publication NZ Author.

Ian Wedde is the author of nine novels, sixteen collections of poetry, a collection of stories, two books of essays, a memoir, several art catalogues and a monograph on the artist Bill Culbert; his edited work includes two Penguin anthologies of poetry. He is the recipient of well over 30 major awards, including New Zealand Poet Laureate from (2011-2013), and was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in the Queen’s Birthday honours list (2010). He has been awarded 14 grants, fellowships and residences, most recently the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Poetry (2014), and Creative New Zealand Writer-in-Residence in Berlin (2013-14). Ian’s latest novel is The Reed Warbler (Victoria University Press, 2020) and his latest poetry collection is The Little Ache – a German notebook (Victoria University Press, 2021), written while he was researching The Reed Warbler.

Vera Hua Dong discovered the joys of writing and gardening three years after she moved from Shanghai to Kerikeri, where she has lived with her husband and two children since 2013. Her writing deepens her sense of childhood in China and opens her mind’s eye to the beauty of living in rural New Zealand. She writes prose and poetry in both Chinese and English.

Heather McQuillan is Director of Write On School for Young Writers in Christchurch. In 2016, her stories placed first in both the NZ National Flash Fiction Day and Micro Madness competitions. She has been published in Best Small Fictions 2017, 2019 and 2020. In 2021 Heather was a finalist in the RNZ Short Story and Literary Taxidermy competitions. Heather also writes for children and in 2005 was the winner of the Tom Fitzgibbon Award. Three of her novels for young readers have been listed as Storylines Notable Books. Her collection of flash fiction Where Oceans Meet was published by Reflex Press in 2019.

Mikaela Nyman hails from the Åland Islands. She writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Swedish. Her first novel Sado was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in 2020. Her latest work appears in the Spinoff Friday poems, and collaborative poetry with ni-Vanuatu writers in the climate change anthology No Other Place to Stand (Auckland University Press, 2022). In 2021, she was the Writer in Residence for Massey University and Palmerston North city. Short-listed for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2020 for her first poetry collection, När vändkrets läggs mot vändkrets (Ellips, 2019). Co-editor with Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen for Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (THWUP, 2021). Currently she is a mentor and assessor for New Zealand Society of Authors and runs Writing for Wellbeing sessions for the community in Taranaki where she lives.

Mandira Pattnaik is an Indian fiction writer, essayist and columnist published in over two hundred magazines across fifteen countries, including in The McNeese Review, The Penn Review, Timber Journal, DASH, Amsterdam Quarterly, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Commonwealth Writers, Passages North, Splonk Ireland, Flash Frontier NZ, Flash Flood UK, Best Small Fictions Anthology 2021 and others. She writes columns about ‘Writer-life and the World’ in Trampset, and about ‘Home and Outsider Perspectives’ in Reckon Review. She has edited for various journals, and is presently the Contributing Editor of Vestal Review. Her work has been translated, highly commended in CRAFT Flash Fiction Contest 2020 and LITRO Summer Flash contest 2021, and nominated for multiple Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction and Best of the Net.

Apirana Taylor is a nationally and internationally published poet, playwright, short story writer and novelist. He’s been Writer in Residence at Canterbury and Massey Universities, Rangi Ruru, St Andrews College and Hagley Community College. He tours globally presenting his poetry and taking creative writing workshops. He’s written and published poetry, plays, short stories and novels and is included in many anthologies nationally and internationally. He tours schools, tertiary institutions, universities, marae, galleries and prisons throughout the country reading his poetry.

Poet, writer and actor/performer, Vivian Thonger (Kerikeri, New Zealand) hones her skills with several Northland groups, including the Bay of Islands Writing Group and Kerikeri Theatre Company. . Her written work has been long- and shortlisted in several countries’ flash fiction and novella-in-flash competitions, and appeared in print and online. An illustrated, co-written, chopped-up memoir with soundtrack is in the offing.

Iona Winter (Waitaha) writes in hybrid forms, and is Poetry Editor for the Otago Daily Times. The author of three collections: Gaps in the Light (2021), Te Hau Kāika (2019) and then the wind came (2018), she is widely published and anthologised internationally. Iona has a Master’s degree in Creative Writing (AUT), and is currently working on a creative non-fiction project which addresses the complexities of being suicide bereaved.

Renee Liang is a poet, playwright and essayist. She has toured eight plays and collaborates on visual arts works, dance, film, opera, community events and music. Some poetry and short fiction are anthologised. A memoir of motherhood, When We Remember to Breathe, with Michele Powles, appeared in 2019. In 2018 she was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to the arts.

This year, in addition to this panel, Renee hosts the NFFD Awards night on 19 June, 6-8pm.

Daren Kamali is a poet, writer and musician. His work is influenced and inspired by his Fijian background. Born and raised in Fiji, Kamali moved to New Zealand as a child where he later became a dedicated creator and supporter of New Zealand and Pacific poetry. For 10 years he was a creative arts youth worker and mentor and, in 2008, he founded the South Auckland Poets Collective with Grace Taylor and Ramon Narayan. As a Youthline initiative, the collective aims to foster a passion for poetry in young people, using spoken word poetry and performance as a tool for positive social change. In 2012 he was the Fulbright/CNZ Pacific Writer in Residence at University of Hawai’i, and in 2014 he partook in the International Writers program in Iowa City. His most recent book is Vunimaqo and Me: Mango Tree Collections (Kava Bowl Media, 2021).

S J Mannion is an Irish writer living in Ōtautahi Christchurch. When she can she writes, when she can’t she reads.

Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu-Ngāti Whaoa) is a writer living on Te Ākitai Waiohua whenua. In 2019, she joined Rangatahi o te Pene, which self-published Te Rito o te Harakeke, an anthology of Māori voices for Ihumātao. She complete her Master of Creative Writing at the Internation Institute of Modern Letters, where she was awarded the Modern Letters Fiction Prize. She is a proud CODA, fluent in NZSL, taught to her by her māmā, Tui.

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English, and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian and Spanish. He was poetry editor of the Māori and Indigenous Review Journal until 2011. He was a semi-finalist in the Proverse Prize for Literature in 2009 and highly commended in the 2013 erbacce poetry prize (from 6000+ entrants). He won the inaugural Proverse Poetry prize in 2016, the same year as his poetry collection Atonement was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines.His recent collections of poetry include ināianaei/now (Cyberwit) and mō taku tama (Kilmog Press, Dunedin).

Cristina Schumacher is a Brazilian linguist based in New Zealand. She writes flash, poetry and fantasy. With 28 language manual titles published since 1999, she is also a coach, translator, evaluator and consultant. Cristina’s work is focused on language awareness and on how language knowledge can become a tool for self-development. Cristina runs the Language Department at EarthDiverse.

Sophia Wilson is a multilingual writer and poet. Originally from Anaiwan Country New England Tablelands NSW Australia, she is currently based outside Ōtepoti Dunedin where she runs a small organic farm and animal refuge with her Asian-born partner and three daughters. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies and been recognised in awards including the Kathleen Grattan Prize, the Robert Burns Poetry Competition, the Hippocrates Prize and the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize. Her small fictions have placed in National Flash Fiction Day competitions and been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction and the Pushcart Prize.

Victor Billot is a writer from Dunedin, New Zealand. His poetry collection “The Sets” was published by Otago University Press in 2020. He has been published in several Australian and New Zealand publications and anthologies, including the forthcoming “No Other Place To Stand: an Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand” (Auckland University Press, 2022). He writes a weekly satirical poem for the website Newsroom.

Shelley Burne-Field (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Rārua, Samoa, Pākehā) is a Hawke’s Bay writer of fiction and creative non-fiction. She is a graduate of both the Masters in Creative Writing (2020) at Auckland University under Professor Paula Morris and Te Papa Tupu Writing Programme developed by the Māori Literature Trust. Shelley’s short stories have been published in anthologies and online – one recently translated into Spanish. She was a finalist in the Voyager Media Awards 2021, and is the only New Zealand finalist named in the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize 2022.

Lola Elvy is the founding editor of the youth journal fingers comma toes and runs the youth NFFD competition. She writes music, poetry and other forms of creative fiction and nonfiction. In addition to writing, she is passionate about language, art and the environment, and speaks English, German and Swedish. She worked tutoring English as a second language at a Montessori school in Germany in 2019, and is now based in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Her poetry has been featured in Fast Fibres, Olentangy Review and The Larger Geometry: poems for peace (anthology, 2018).

Mrigaa Sethi (she/they) was born in Delhi, raised in Bangkok and educated in Boston and New York City. Her poems have appeared in The Seneca Review, Mahogany Journal and other magazines and been anthologized in Call & Response 2: A Singapore Migrant Anthology and Exhale: An Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices. She’s also a storyteller, and has twice been the audience choice winner of Singapore’s What’s Your Story Slam. She lives in Singapore with her spouse and two cats.

Ataria Sharman (Tapuika, Ngāpuhi) is a writer of essays, poetry and articles. Born and raised in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, she now lives in Hikurangi, Whangārei, Te Tai Tokerau. Sharman has a Master of Arts in Māori Studies and spent a year researching mana wahine and atua wāhine as well as interviewing Māori women about their experiences with atua wāhine. Sharman is the creator of Awa Wahine, an organisation that aims to uplift and creativity of wāhine Māori. In 2021, she was the recipient of the Verb Festival micro residency in Wellington. Her children’s fiction novel Hine and the Tohunga Portal was published by Huia in 2021. Her writing has been published on E-Tangata and her poetry featured in IHO: A Collaborative Exhibition about Māori Hair.

Catherine Trundle is a writer and anthropologist, based in Wellington. She writes flash fiction, poetry and ethnography, and experiments with unpicking the boundaries between academic and creative genres.