New Zealand writers: resources for schools
Up close and personal
Interviews
Want to see a writer live in action, but can’t get them to your school? Here’s something we prepared earlier . . . click here for a selection of video and audio interviews with New Zealand writers.
Authors under the spotlight
We’ve put two of our favourite authors under the spotlight to tell us more about their work.
Click their names to read more information in their Book Council Writer Files.
Angie Belcher
writer, profile published in BRAT, Summer 2000
Angie Belcher is a Maketu mother, writer and part-time teacher. She describes herself as a self-confessed adrenaline addict who feels the fear but does it anyway. An ex-skydiver, mad keen scuba diver and cave crawler she says, 'I'll try anything once'. Angie draws on these spine tingling, hair raising, premature aging experiences to enrich her literary career.
She rates her scariest moment as a toss between hanging upside down 3000ft above the earth when her parachute harness got caught in the doorway of a plane and being eyed up as a tasty shish-ka-bob by a marlin while diving in Papua New Guinea.
Many of her children's books including Bungee 70528, The Hole in the Hill and White Knuckle Territory, draw upon New Zealand's adventure pursuits as a main theme. Her husband, well known Adventure Photographer, Andy Belcher, provides powerful images for the text. Angie hopes her books will kindle a love of adventure in the children who read them. She says 'I have a passion for children and for adventure. Writing is just the medium I use to bring them together. I want to show them that life can be really exciting. They just have to switch off TV, go outside and live it.'
Andrew Bell
writer, profile published in BRAT, Summer 2002
My writing has two essential goals: to express my views of the world and to communicate with my fellow human beings. I'm sure that I'm not the only writer who feels a conflict in their personality because sometimes I need time alone to write and at other times I need to be interacting with people. I don't know how other writers accommodate this conflict, but I did it by becoming a rock singer and then an actor. Then I discovered Writers in Schools! I love visiting schools because children are so alive with imagination and open to the world. A writer needs these very qualities. I enjoy encouraging children to nurture their own writing abilities. Once I was engaged to help two schools to create their own original picture books. The kids were buzzing when their own creations went on the school library shelves.
Our Writers in Schools authors
Click on a region or letter below or use the box to search for authors who visit schools through our Writers in Schools programme. You can click on a name in the search results to visit the author’s Book Council Writer File, full of information about their life and work.
Can't find the author you’re looking for? It may be they are not currently on our Writers in Schools programme. You can search for information about more New Zealand writers from our Authors home page.
