JFEST 2019 readers and writers weekend

Barbara Else is an author, editor, manuscript assessor and mentor. She has held the University of Victoria Writing Fellowship and the University of Otago College of Education/Creative New Zealand Children’s Writing Fellowship. She is an MNZM for services to literature and was awarded the Margaret Mahy Medal for services to children’s literature. The first of her six novels for adults was The Warrior Queen. She has also written six for children with a seventh due out in April. Her Tales of Fontania Quartet (Gecko Press), started with multiple award-winning The Travelling Restaurant and ended with The Knot Impossible.  She has also complied several anthologies of NZ stories for children.  Her latest book is non-fiction, the best-selling Go Girl – A Storybook of Epic NZ Women’(Puffin) .

Chris Else has had six novels, and two collections of short fiction published. A seventh novel, Waterline, is due out in 2019. Chris has been a holder of the Foxton Fellowship and has held several major Creative New Zealand grants for work on his fiction. He has been very active in New Zealand literary organisations, with a long involvement in the NZ Society of Authors (PEN), the Montana Book Awards and has been a regular feature at arts and literary festivals around the country. He has also served on the NZ Book Council and the Copyright Tribunal and as director and chairman of Copyright Licensing Ltd.

With his wife, playwright, novelist and children’s writer, Barbara Else, he is a partner in Total Fiction Services, a literary agency and manuscript assessment service. TFS counts among its successful clients Alan Duff, Emma Neale, Rachael Craw, Nigel Cox, Rachael King and Mike Johnson.