Andrea Frazier is a queer writer who lives in Pittsburgh. Her work has appeared in Lost Balloon and Drunk Monkeys.

Pat Foran is a writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work was selected for the Best Small Fictions 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2021 anthologies, the Best Microfiction 2021 anthology, and for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2022. He also received the 2021 Mythic Picnic Prize in Fiction. Web: https://neutralspaces.co/patforan/ Twitter: @pdforan

Goldie Goldbloom is an internationally published writer of fiction and nonfiction. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the City of Chicago, the Brown Foundation, and Yaddo. This year, her most recent novel won the French Bookseller’s Prize for Fiction and the National Jewish Library Award. Previously her novel The Paperbark Shoe was placed on the NEA Big Reads list. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, on NPR, and in Le Monde. She is a single mother of eight and an LGBTQ advocate.

Malvika Jolly is a poet and literary translator based in New York City. Her writing explores postcolonial poetics, magical realism, imperialism, hybridity, women’s narratives, folklore and mythology, and transnational solidarity movements. She and her writing have been featured in MIZNA, The Rumpus, Salt Hill Journal, The Best Small Fictions Anthology 2023, and in programs for the Brooklyn Rail, Method Bandra, and The New York Foundation for the Arts. She curates The New Third World, a traveling poetry reading series inspired by the Non-Aligned Movement.

Babak Lakghomi is the author of Floating Notes (Tyrant Books, 2018) and South (forthcoming from Dundurn Press, 2023). His work has appeared American Short Fiction, NOON, Ninth Letter, Green Mountains Review, and New York Tyrant Magazine, among others, and has been translated into Italian and Farsi. Babak was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives in Toronto, Canada.

Ogochukwu Ogbonna is a creative writer and poet from Mbaise, Imo state, Nigeria. She was raised in Lagos state, where she attended primary and secondary school. She graduated from Nnamdi Azikiwe University with her first degree before moving to the Republic of Ireland, where she is currently pursuing a Master’s degree. Ogochukwu has always been fascinated by the potency of words and their ability to paint pictures on the canvas of our minds. Her poems and short stories have been published in Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, Kalahari Review, Lolwe, and on her medium account. You can find her on Twitter @Stopshoutingpls and Instagram @Handscuffs_to_ashes.

Gillian O’Shaughnessy is a prize-winning short fiction author from Walyalup/Fremantle, Western Australia. She spent twenty-five years with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a journalist and radio presenter and curated Writer’s Weekend for Perth Festival in 2022. Her short fiction has been widely published in journals and anthologies in the United States, Britain, and Australia and she’s a submissions editor with US flash fiction journal, SmokeLong Quarterly. Find her at gillianoshaughnessy.com

Kaj Tanaka’s fiction has appeared in New South, The New Ohio Review, and Tin House and has been selected for Best Microfiction and Wigleaf’s Top 50. Kaj is the former fiction editor of Gulf Coast and a Sewanee Tennessee Williams Scholar. His novella The Caretakers is forthcoming from [PANK].

Tola Zysman (she/her) is a writer from Warsaw, Poland. Her work has been recognised by Bennington College and Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and is published, amongst others, in The Adroit Journal and Gone Lawn. Tola was named a finalist for the 2023 Adroit Prize for Prose. When not writing, you can find her combing through second-hand bookshops or tweeting @tolazysman.

with Nathan Leslie, Series Editor and Catherine McNamara, 2023 Guest Editor

Nathan Leslie won the 2019 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for fiction for his collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. Invisible Hand (2022) and A Fly in the Ointment (2023) are his latest books. Nathan’s previous works of fiction include Three Men, Root and Shoot, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Night Sweat. Nathan is the publisher and editor of the online journal Maryland Literary Review. Previously he was series editor for Best of the Web and fiction editor for Pedestal Magazine. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in hundreds of literary magazines. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write and ended up running a bar in Ghana. Catherine lives in Italy where she runs writing retreats. She is the author of The Cartography of Others, Love Stories for Hectic People and Pelt and Other Stories, Flash Fiction Editor for Litro Magazine, and this year’s Guest Editor for the Best Small Fictions Anthology. Her short fiction collection The Carnal Fugues is out in November. She is the 2023 Guest Editor of Best Small Fictions.

Alex Reece Abbott is a New Zealand-Irish writer. Honoured with Flash Frontier’s Summer Writing Award and a Penguin Random House WriteNow finalist, her work is widely anthologised, including in The Best Small Fictions Anthology 2022, Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand and The Broken Spiral, and an Irish Novel Fair, Northern Crime, Arvon, Pulp Literature, Crediton and HG Wells prize-winner.

Tina Barry is the author of Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower. Her writing appears in numerous publications, including Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, Nasty Women Poets, A Constellation of Kisses, and Rattle. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.

David Eggleton was the Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate between August 2019 and August 2022. He has edited Landfall and Landfall Review Online as well as the Phantom Billstickers Café Reader. Currently he is back editing Landfall Review Online. His book The Conch Trumpet won the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. Also in 2016, he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. David’s newest collection is Respirator: A Laureate Collection 2019 -2022,  published by Otago University Press in March 2023. He lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin.

Nod Ghosh graduated from the Hagley Writers’ Institute, Christchurch, New Zealand. Truth Serum Press has published the following novellas-in-flash: The Crazed Wind (2018), Filthy Sucre (2020), Toy Train (2021). Nod has judged the Bath Flash Fiction Award, read for SmokeLong Quarterly and UK National Flash Fiction Day. Further details: nodghosh.com

Erik Kennedy is the author of the poetry books There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018) and Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), both with Te Herenga Waka University Press, and he co-edited No Other Place to Stand, an anthology of Aotearoa climate change poetry (Auckland University Press, 2022).

Síle Mannion is a proud Irish woman and citizen of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Published variously and widely, on this side of the world and the other, she writes and writes, poems and bits and pieces of small fictions, short stories and reviews. She writes in English, her first love, and flirts on occasion with Spanish, particularly in song, but she is faithful unto death to the Irish, as she says: ‘It is a part of me and as necessary, as the rain.  If English is my tūrangawaewae then Irish is my sheltering Rangi-nui-e-tu-nei.’

Sam Rasnake has published work in Wigleaf, Southern Poetry Anthology, Poets & Artists, and Bending Genres Anthology 2018 / 2019, and has served as a judge for the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, University of California, Berkeley. He’s the author of Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press) and World within the World (Cyberwit).

Rachel Smith’s prose and poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including Landfall, Best Small Fictions 2020, and Best Microfiction 2019. She was a recipient of the NZSA Complete MS Manuscript assessment in 2021 and is an editor at Flash Frontier. @rachelmsmithnz1 rachelmsmithnz.wix.com/rachel-smith

Andrew Stancek clutches onto hope, even in turbulent times. He has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, FRIGG, Hobart, Green Mountains Review, New World Writing, New Flash Fiction Review, Jellyfish Review, and Peacock Journal, among others. He has won the Reflex Fiction contest and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He continues to be astonished.

With Editor Michelle Elvy

Michelle Elvy edits at Flash Frontier and Best Small Fictions, and founded National Flash Fiction Day NZ. Her anthology projects include, most recently, A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha – An anthology of new writing for a changed world, edited with Witi Ihimaera (Massey University Press, 2023).  Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021). michelleelvy.com

Lindsay Gale, eleven, is a student of Olentangy Liberty Middle School at Ohio, United States. She loves books, dogs, and mangos.

Sophia Hall can be found wearing a frog bucket hat and Van Gogh socks. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Writing Awards, the Library of Congress, and several other organizations. In 2022, she won the Smith College Poetry Prize for High School Girls. Sophia is also the Art and Social Justice Fellow at Strathmore Arts Center and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. Her haiku have been displayed in prominent locations in the Washington DC Business District. 

Emma Hong is a thirteen-year-old living in Iowa City, Iowa. If she’s not in plain sight, she will probably be found writing, cooped up like a vampire in daylight with obnoxiously loud typing, her particular interests rooted in dystopian fiction. She also plays sports, and the violin.

Almu Cameron Parra is eleven years old and lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Originally from California, Almu loves to mountain bike, draw, skate, and ski.

Emma Philips is seventeen years old and lives in Ararua, which is frequently forgotten on maps of New Zealand. Currently attending Ruawai College, she is still choosing whether to pursue physics or journalism. Previously her work has been shortlisted in the national flash fiction day youth competition, won the 2022 Turnbull Library Smart Alex Competition and been published in fingers comma toes.

Sarah-Kate Simons is a writer and poet originally from rural Canterbury, but now based in Tauranga. She is widely published in journals and anthologies. She has been shortlisted and placed in many writing competitions locally and internationally, and was a judge for the 2022 New Zealand Poetry Society haiku junior competition. Her hobbies include ballet, art, and verbal sparring matches with her characters.

Miho Yamashita is a seventeen-year-old from Chiba, Japan. Writing has always been her greatest passion. She has published several pieces of poetry in the school newspaper, and has won awards in national competitions such as IIBC English Essay Contest and English Haiku Contest. She hopes to continue her education in the United States.

Eric Yang is always an eager writer and is hoping to be an author one day. He loves mystery novels, specifically ones with unexpected plot twists. In addition to writing, art is also a hobby he enjoys pursuing in his free time.

Ellie Zhou is a fourteen-year-old St. Andrew’s College student in Christchurch, New Zealand. She loves netball, her guitars, and her friends, and has a deep appreciation for great music.

Hannah Scovell-Lightfoot, moderator

Hannah Scovell-Lightfoot takes great delight in climbing trees, the barefoot existence, asking questions, rollerskating, and bearing herself to the rollercoaster ride of being alive. She most commonly finds herself floor-sitting doodling, organic shop perusing, improving her already rather extensive morning routine, having passionate conversations, journalling, hitchhiking, and engaging in satiric banter.

Gina Cole is of Fijian, Scottish, and Welsh descent.  She is the author of Black Ice Matter, which won Best First Book of Fiction at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and the winner of the 2014 Auckland Pride Festival’s creative writing competition for the poem ‘Airport Aubade’. Cole’s work has been widely anthologized and she was a keynote speaker at the 2017 Auckland Writers Festival and the Same Same But Different LGBTQIA+ Writing Festival. She was a 2018 Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa International Writing Program. She was also the 2018 writer in residence at the Sitka Island Institute. Gina holds a PhD in creative writing from Massey University. Her second book Na Viro (Huia Publishers, 2022) is a science fiction fantasy novel and a work of Pasifikafuturism.

David Eggleton was the Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate between August 2019 and August 2022. He has edited Landfall and Landfall Review Online as well as the Phantom Billstickers Café Reader. Currently he is back editing Landfall Review Online. His book The Conch Trumpet won the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. Also in 2016, he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. David’s newest collection is Respirator: A Laureate Collection 2019 -2022,  published by Otago University Press in March 2023. He lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin.

Faisal Halabi is an Iraqi-born, Tāmaki Makaurau-based lawyer and writer.  His works have been published in various publications across Aotearoa New Zealand, both in hard copy and online.  His writing has appeared in other recent publications such as Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand, an anthology of New Zealand writing exploring national diversity.

Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country (Scribe 2020) – winner of the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, The Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc., 2013) and an Adjunct Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University. She was awarded the NZSA Waitangi Day Literary Honours in 2022. Her next collection is Gunflower, released with Scribe October 2023.

Following a career in teaching and art education in Wellington, Reihana Robinson threw it all away for a life of homesteading, writing, art and environmental research, and living off grid in the Coromandel. She was the inaugural recipient of the Te Atairangikaahu Poetry Award and was selected for AUP’s New Poets 3 in 2008. Reihana has held artist residencies at the East West Center in Hawaii and at the Anderson Center, Minnesota. Reihana’s published poetry books are Aue Rona (Steele Roberts, 2012), a reimagining of the Māori myth of Rona and the moon; and Her Limitless Her (Mākaro Press, 2018). She is also author of The Killing Nation, New Zealand’s State-Sponsored Addiction to Poison 1080 (Off  the Common Books, 2017).

Ian Wedde is a poet, fiction writer, critic and art director. His most recent publications are The Reed Warbler (2020) and The Little Ache — a German notebook (2021). He says of his poetry, ‘Most of my poems are concerned with how we live, how we should live, and are political in these senses. At the same time I think I seldom tell; I enquire.’ He lives in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

Erik Kennedy, moderator

Erik Kennedy is the author of the poetry collections Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022) and There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), and he co-edited No Other Place to Stand, a book of climate change poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific (2022). His poems, stories, and criticism have been widely published. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

Ivy Alvarez is the author of Diaspora, Vol L (Paloma), The Everyday English Dictionary (Paekakariki Press), and Disturbance (Seren). Widely anthologised, including Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa NZ. Born in the Philippines, she lived in Australia, Ireland and Wales, before arriving in New Zealand (2014). www.ivyalvarez.com

Roberta Beary’s poetry and fiction are widely published and anthologized. Their awards include Bridport Prize for Poetry and Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. They have published several poetry books, including The Unworn Necklace (Snapshot Press), a haiku best seller and Poetry Society of America finalist, and Deflection (Accents), their prize-winning haibun collection, honored by the Haiku Society of America, the Haiku Foundation, and the Eric Hoffer Awards. They are the longtime haibun editor for Modern Haiku and co-author of the craft book, Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc). Born in New York City, they divide their time between the USA and Ireland with their husband, Frank Stella.

Lola Elvy writes music, poetry and other forms of creative fiction and nonfiction, and is the founding editor of the online journal fingers comma toes, which hosts the youth competition for National Flash Fiction Day. Currently pursuing a degree in music and mathematics, Lola is passionate about language and the environment. She has taught workshops for literary festivals in Aotearoa New Zealand and tutors online youth courses in poetry, creative writing, and essay writing. Her work has been featured at events and in online and print anthologies, including Fast Fibres, Olentangy Review, The Larger Geometry: poems for peace (2018) and A Cluster of Lights (2023).

Jenna Heller is an American-Kiwi writer living in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her poetry and fiction appear predominantly in journals based in Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States, occasionally in Australia, Canada, and the UK. She won the Aotearoa New Zealand National Flash Fiction Day contest in 2020, was runner-up for the Caselberg International Poetry Prize in 2021, and was shortlisted for the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing in 2019. Her writing has appeared in the Best Small Fictions anthology in 2020, 2021, and is forthcoming in 2023. She hopes to publish her first flash collection one day soon.

Charlotte Hamrick’s creative writing and photography has been published in a number of literary journals including Still: The Journal, Flash Frontier, Atticus Review, Trampset, and New World Writing. Her fiction was selected for the Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2023 anthology and she’s had several literary nominations. She is founder and Co-EiC for SugarSugarSalt and Features Editor for Reckon Review. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets where she sometimes does things other than read and write.

David Howard is the author of Rāwaho: the Completed Poems (Cold Hub Press, 2022) and the editor of A Place To Go On From: the Collected Poems of Iain Lonie (Otago University Press, 2015). Poems from his last four volumes have appeared in Best New Zealand Poems. In 1989 David co-founded (with the fiction writer Sandra Arnold) the literary quarterly Takahe; in 1990 he co-founded the Canterbury Poets Collective. David is a professional pyrotechnician who has worked as SFX supervisor for acts such as Janet Jackson and Metallica. His personal website is: www.davidhowardpoet.com

Liz Morton’s poetry and prose are published in New Zealand, UK, USA, Ireland, Australia, Canada and online. She is included in Best Small Fictions (2016, 2021), and came second, twice, in the Sunday Star-Times Short Story competition, as well as second in the inaugural Sargeson Prize short story competition. She came first in the New Voices Emerging Poet competition (2013), first in the Poetry New Zealand Poetry Prize (2021), was shortlisted in poetry (2018, 2019, 2021) and short story (2018) categories of the Bridport Prize, and was highly commended in the Kathleen Grattan Award (2015 & 2021). She is feature poet in the 2017 Poetry New Zealand Yearbook. Her poetry collections include Wolf (Mākaro Press, 2017), This is your real name (Otago University Press, 2020) and Naming the beasts (Otago University Press, 2022).

John Brantingham, moderator

John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines, Writers Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has nineteen books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction including Life: Orange to Pear, Kitkitdizzi, and Days of Recent Divorce. He is the founder and general editor of The Journal of Radical Wonder.  He lives in Jamestown, NY.

Claudia Bolz completed a European Masters in Conference Interpreting in Paris (Sorbonne Nouvelle). She is EU accredited and a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (aiic) and the New Zealand Society of Translators & Interpreters (NZSTI). She works from English and Italian (her so-called ‘passive languages’) and into German and French (‘active languages’). Her mum says she’s always been fussy about words.

Anna Heraskina Foster is a Ukrainian-born poet and author currently living in Auckland. Her work has been published in The New Review (NY), SHO (Kyiv) and SNOB (Moscow). She has been a participant and winner of competitions at literary festivals such as the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (Bali), Pushkin in Britain,Kyiv Laurels and many others. Together with her husband Alexander Foster she is working on a collaborative project of poetry and painting ‘Across Oceans’.

Jana Grohnert is a freelance translator from English and German into German and English. She translates fiction for adults and children, and occasionally poetry. She has a Bachelor’s in Linguistics and Spanish from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a Master’s in Intercultural Communication and Applied Translation from Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, where she is currently a PhD candidate in Literary Translation Studies. Her current research focuses on bi-directionality in translation and the translation of bilingual literature.

Síle Mannion is a proud Irish woman and citizen of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Published variously and widely, on this side of the world and the other, she writes and writes, poems and bits and pieces of small fictions, short stories and reviews. She writes in English, her first love, and flirts on occasion with Spanish, particularly in song, but she is faithful unto death to the Irish, as she says: ‘It is a part of me and as necessary, as the rain.  If English is my tūrangawaewae then Irish is my sheltering Rangi-nui-e-tu-nei.’

Moata McNamara (Ngāpuhi) has been gifted two main languages: English, the language of daytime, of Mother, school and neighbours in her younger days. And Māori, the Father tongue of evening, night, adventures. Her dad would tell old stories, sing waiata to put her to sleep. She grew up with a love of languages, of difference. This has carried to an extensive art practice and to writing. After many years in academia she now enjoys a growing writing practice, with recent works published in Flash Frontier and At The Bay/I Te Kokoru.

Mikaela Nyman is an editor and writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Swedish. Her essay on, and translation of, New Zealand poet Helen Heath’s work was published by Ellips in Finland in 2022. Read an interview with Mikaela and Helen on Flash Frontier. Widely anthologised, most recently in No Other Place to Stand (2022) and Madness: a world poetry anthology (2023). Writer in Residence for Massey University and Palmerston North City in 2021. NZ Radio Awards finalist 2023 with Sugar Loafing Arts Cast. Co-editor of Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (Te Herenga Waka Press, 2021).

Sharni Wilson is a literary translator from the Japanese and a writer of fiction. She has translated fiction by leading contemporary Japanese writers such as Kaori Ekuni, Fumio Takano, and Masatomo Tamaru. Her work has appeared in Landfall, Asymptote, and the Malahat Review, among others. Born and raised in Kirikiriroa, she received her M.A. in Japanese literary translation from the University of Auckland. She is a graduate of the British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School. In 2020 she was a finalist for Lunch Ticket’s Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts. She can be found at sharniwilson.com.

Michelle Elvy, moderator

Michelle Elvy edits at Flash Frontier and Best Small Fictions, and founded National Flash Fiction Day NZ. Her anthology projects include, most recently, A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha – An anthology of new writing for a changed world, edited with Witi Ihimaera (Massey University Press, 2023).  Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021). michelleelvy.com

Bram Casey is, while regrettably a high school student first, a writer and performer born and raised in Dunedin. Whenever he finds time, he writes about love and societal change, mostly through the lenses of mythology, religion and nature. He is a coordinator of the Dunedin Youth Writers Association, and has appeared in every edition of the association’s publication, Minor Gospel. His work also appears in Re-Draft 22: The Aferlife of an Ice Cream Wrapper (Clerestory Press, 2023).

Kate K. Choi lives in Seoul, South Korea. Her writing has been recognized by the National Young Arts Foundation, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Seoul International Women’s Association, among others. Additionally, she has work published or forthcoming in Diode Poetry Journal, The Incandescent Review, Body Without Organs, and more. She loves dark chocolate and classic rock, and is currently eighteen years old.

Maggie Yang is eighteen years old and enjoys exploring the vivid, heightened moments of life through stories.

Ella Sage is seventeen and is growing interests in many things, including writing, their future, and the ocean. Based on the West Coast of New Zealand, Ella is trying to connect to the world around them, especially through writing. Their work can be found in a few Re-Draft anthologies, as well as on the shortlist of both the NZ Schools Poetry Competition 2022 and the 2022 Sargeson Prize.

Maggie Yang is eighteen years old and enjoys exploring the vivid, heightened moments of life through stories.

Joy Tong, moderator

Joy Tong (童诗佳) is a writer, musician and professional cat-petter from Tāmaki Makaurau, currently pursuing a Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry double major at Duke University. Balancing her passion for STEM is her tendency to explore inexplicable thoughts with poetry and short stories. On campus, she serves as Associate Editor for the university literary journal, The Archive. Her works are published in Landfall, Mayhem, Starling, and Signals, as well as A Clear Dawn, an anthology of New Zealand-Asian voices.

Anton Blank (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) is of Māori and Swiss heritage. He has an extensive history in social work, communications, Māori development, public health, literature, and fine arts. Anton has held senior roles in the government and not for profit sectors, including Communications Services Manager at the Ministry of Education and Executive Director of the Māori child advocacy organization Mana Ririki. Anton was the Principal Investigator of the 2016 report Unconscious bias and education – a comparative study of Māori and African American students. He is an international expert in unconscious bias and racism, and now works across justice, health, education, literature, and the arts, developing strategies to mitigate unconscious bias and its impact on Māori and other marginalized groups. Anton is the editor and founder of the Māori literary journal Ora Nui.

Peripatetic in nature, Jennifer Halli was raised in the wilds of South Carolina and found home in Ngāmotu by way of Kāwhia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Montana, Melbourne, Kardella, Wellington, Feilding, Tennessee, South Carolina, Colorado and Pennsylvania.  She participates in international exhibitions and residencies and received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts|Dartmouth in 2019 as a Distinguished Art Fellow. In April 2023, Jennifer won the New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Awards Main Prize for Printmaking. Jennifer runs MIGHT COULD, an experimental art project space in central Ngāmotu. Follow her antics on instagram: @jenniferhalli and @might.could.

Ashley Johnson is a Toronto artist, originally from South Africa. His art promotes a symbiotic relationship between humanity and the environment. His metaphorical paintings explore socio-environmental issues like the state of the ocean. The identity of forms is ‘loosened’ through overlays and omissions to generate an uncertain perception. This creates a zone for viewers to re-imagine existence. He says: “We need to reappraise our animal nature and our relationship to the land. A key tool for this is the virility of perception. We project what we think we see, so we need to seed this possibility with fresh vision.”

Maureen Lander is an active multi-media installation artist whose work has helped to blaze a trail for Māori artists, and significantly contributed to the recognition of weaving in a contemporary art context. Her artwork draws inspiration from woven fibre taonga in museum collections as well as from contemporary installation art. She first began learning cloak-making skills from noted Māori weaver Diggeress Te Kanawa, and spent many years researching fibre arts. Since her retirement from university teaching, Maureen has continued to make and exhibit her own creative work, mainly in the form of large fibre installations. As an artist, Maureen is committed to innovation in a way that is deeply collaborative. Maureen received a Te Waka Toi Kingi Ihaka award in 2019, and a Queen’s Birthday MNZM honour in 2020. In 2022 she also received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Auckland and an Arts Laureate from The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi.

Noa Noa von Bassewitz is an artist of Māori and German extraction living and working in between Wellington and Te Ākau.  Her primary mediums are wood block prints on paper and mixed media. Art making is both a conduit for her creative energies and a grounding force. Noa Noa’s prints weave pacific and abstract symbolism into visual narratives. Creatures from the realms of the subconscious, Taniwha, wild pigs, and mythic creatures with teeth and claws and beaks are interwoven in her work. Relationships and the environment feature prominently as themes.

Moata McNamara, moderator

Moata McNamara (Ngāpuhi) has been gifted two main languages: English, the language of daytime, of Mother, school and neighbours in her younger days. And Māori, the Father tongue of evening, night, adventures. Her dad would tell old stories, sing waiata to put her to sleep. She grew up with a love of languages, of difference. This has carried to an extensive art practice and to writing. After many years in academia she now enjoys a growing writing practice, with recent works published in Flash Frontier and At The Bay/I Te Kokoru.