Welcome
Kia ora and welcome to the NZ Society of Authors Northland website. On this site, we include our monthly newsletter and highlight members’ profiles, publications, book launches and other activities including workshops, conferences and presentations. We also keep you informed about events we are planning.
Meetings
Monthly Branch Meetings will be held via Zoom at 7.30 on the first Tuesday of the month.
The Zoom link will be sent to members with the agenda.
Dates will be advised in the monthly newsletter and on our Facebook page.
Facebook page (public) and Facebook group (private)
It is our intention to hold face-to-face events of interest to our members throughout the year.
Contact northlandauthors [at] gmail [dot] com for more information.
Members
The Northland branch of the NZSA was formed in 1996, and some of the original starting members still play central roles in our organisation. Our group has expanded to include around 90 members who come from all over Northland — from farmland, bush, coastal settlements and the urban centres of Whangarei, Kaitaia, Kerikeri and Dargaville.
If you are interested in finding out more about the New Zealand Society of Authors, please go to the national website for information about the Society, its members and new membership opportunities.
If you are a writer residing in Northland and interested in finding out more about our branch, please email us at: northlandauthors [at] gmail [dot] com.
Current Committee Members
Chairperson – Sherryl Clark
Sherryl Clark writes for both adults and young readers. Her first three crime novels were published by Verve Books UK, and her two Lou Alcott PI novels are published by HQ/Harlequin Australia. She also writes flash fiction and is a member of the Whangarei Library 3.30 Flash Fiction group. Her poetry has been published in a wide range of journals and anthologies.
She has published more than 70 books for young readers, including five verse novels. Her verse novel, Mina and the Whole Wide World, won the 2022 Prime Minister’s Award for Children’s Books in Australia. Her other books have won Notables, the NSW Premier’s award and an Honour Book in the CBCA Awards.
After teaching in the Diploma of Professional Writing & Editing at Victoria University TAFE in Melbourne for more than 20 years, Sherryl decided to focus on her writing and her freelance editing business. A Kiwi from the North, she originally went to Australia to work for three months and stayed for 40 years, returning here in 2022 in time for Cyclone Gabriel and three metres of rainfall. But she is finally able to call herself a gardener instead of a plant killer. Her writer’s websites are at www.sherrylclark.com and www.sherrylclarkcrimewriter.com
Vice Chairperson – Deb Jowitt
Deb Jowitt has lived on the Whangarei Heads for the past 22 years. Previously, she and her husband lived off-grid on Great Barrier Island and the Thames Coast, before happily moving with their three children and dog, Tiger, into the fully electrified house they built in Tapu. In 1990, she published These Hills Are Tapu, an environmental history of the Tapu Valley. After a move to Auckland in the late 1990s, she taught midwifery at AUT, which introduced her to academic writing. In 2004 she completed her MSc thesis, and in 2010, her PhD. While working at Auckland City Hospital and Te Tāhū Hauora: Health Quality & Safety Commission, she co-authored medical articles on a wide range of topics.
In 2017, keen to make the switch to fiction, Deb joined Whangārei Library 3.30 Flash. Since then, her micro and flash fiction has been published in several anthologies and online journals, including Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, and Changing Landscapes: Micro and flash fiction from Northland. Her current project is a novella-in-flash based on family stories.
Minutes Secretary – Lesley Marshall
Lesley Marshall is a freelance editor, who also occasionally relief-teaches at a primary school, works as a mentor and assessor for the Society of Authors, and is occasionally hired by publishers as a publishers’ editor. She isn’t a writer, though she used to compile crossword puzzles for magazines, has had a couple of stories on the radio, and has recently had a few articles in the Heritage Rose Journal. She also currently writes an article on PEN issues for each edition of NZSA’s magazine The Author as part of her role of NZ coordinator for PEN.
She has been married to Rex for over forty years, and they have four biological children, and various others that they have helped parent over the years. Some of these are still available for house-painting working bees, which is a huge plus! Lesley has lived in the same house in Maungatapere for the past 40-odd years (some very odd!) and can’t move out because there’s too much accumulated junk/ valuable stuff. The children are all developing anxiety disorders at the realisation that clearing it all out will be their job after Rex and she cark it.
Secretary/ Newsletter Coordinator – Patricia Fenton
Trish is a late-comer to the world of fiction writing. Following a career in education that included writing curriculum and professional development publications for the International Baccalaureate in Cardiff, Wales, she returned to her home town of Whangārei with the aim of fulfilling her dream of writing a novel.
In 2018, she completed a Diploma in Advanced Applied Writing (NorthTec) gaining the NZSA Northland Excellence Award. Her major project involved writing a coming-of-age saga set in the sixties: Beyond the Rimu Grove, published in 2019.
When the spirit moves her, she writes articles, some of which have been published by NZME and Memories Magazine. (Kiwi Foresters in WW2, The Bountiful Life of a Baby Boomer, More to progressing literacy development than phonics.)
Her second novel – War Bride – was published by Heritage Press in August 2023. She’s written the sequel – After the War – which was released in February 2025, and she’s now gone further back in history to write a junior novel – Dear Ruthie – inspired by a postcard sent to her mother during WW1.
Treasurer – Justine Baddeley
After completing a semester on NorthTec’s Diploma of Applied Writing in 2010 Justine sent her picture book assessment to HarperCollins, who published it and released Tea With Miss Tilly illustrated by Phillip Webb in March 2012. On 20th August 2011 she also had a profile piece on country singer Carleen Still published in The Northern Advocate. Then in 2017 Wendy Pye Publishing released her reader All Dressed Up.
Having completed the NorthTec Level 5, 6 and the advanced Applied Writing Diploma Level 7 at the end of 2012, Justine went on to complete her Creative Writing degree with Massey. She is lucky enough to have returned to where it all began, and is now a tutor at NorthTec on the diplomas she once studied. Justine continues to write a Young Adult fantasy based in Whangārei about shape shifters, angels and creatures of nightmares, and the odd children’s picture book.
Justine lives with her husband, youngest daughter, two cats, and a cockatiel named Loki which keep her busy, while still renovating (on a shoestring) twenty-two years after buying a house advertised as Nightmare on George Street. You can contact Justine via her website www.justinebaddeley.com
Communications – Sue Barker
Sue writes all short form fiction and some poetry, but only since 2018. Before that she had a long career as an educator in schools, museums, zoos, and environmental government departments. Then she joined the Whangārei Library 3.30 Flash writers’ group and won the 2020 Whangārei Library Flash Fiction Competition. Since then, she’s been published in Fast Fibres Poetry 9, 10 & 11. She co-edited and contributed to You Might Want to Read This, an anthology of Whangārei Library 3.30 Flash writers published in 2021 and Changing Landscapes, published in 2023. She was short listed for Micro Madness 2022 and published on-line in Flash Frontier and National Poetry Day Given Words. She was put forward for the 2023 Best Microfiction anthology. In 2024 she was published in the anthology Haiku Downunder and in Te Moana o Reo/Ocean of Languages in 2025.
Committee
Heather Whelan
Heather Whelan writes freelance articles, mainly about travel. She is currently published most months in Motorhomes, Caravans & Destinations. Previous articles have appeared in the New Zealand Listener, the New Zealand Herald and Wilderness and Next magazines. Heather also writes for the UK market and has been published in The Lady, This England, Evergreen, Welsh Country, Derbyshire Life, Practical Boat Owner and many other yachting magazines, including in the USA and Australia.
Heather has written an art book for teachers, Smart Art, and a picture book, The Crazy Idea.
Current projects include a travel memoir about sailing from England to New Zealand and a junior novel set in the 1800s.
Zana Bell
Zana Bell writes in a variety of genre, her novels covering YA, historical adventure, and contemporary romance. Her second novel based on Charlotte Badger – convict, pirate and New Zealand’s first known English woman migrant – won the Cataromance Single Title’s 10 Best Books of 2008. In 2010 she won the Cataromance Reviewers’ Award for her romance, Tempting the Negotiator. She has also written short stories and articles that have appeared in publications such as Landfall, NZ Geographic, Takahe, Grace and History Scotland as well as being broadcast on National Radio. In 2000 she was awarded a Creative New Zealand grant and was the recipient of a National Archives Oral Histories grant in 2002. In 2006 she worked with Elizabeth Smither under the NZ Society of Authors Mentor Scheme and was shortlisted for the NZSA Mid-Careers Grant in 2012. In 2014 she was awarded a Vice Chancellor’s scholarship to complete a PhD in Creative Writing at AUT.
Members Books
Beyond the Rimu Grove by Patricia Fenton
In the summer of 1966, a young teacher is dispatched to Ngarimu Valley School as a Probationary Assistant. As her coming-of-age narrative evolves, the reader is immersed in a remote community where nothing is quite the way it seems and lives are poignantly and inextricably interwoven.
Available from bookshops and creative outlets throughout Northland, from the publisher (info[at]lit-links.nz), or by request from your local library (ISBN 978-0-473-46896-5). See more from Patricia at her website: lit-links.nz
The Voyage of the Ika Roa By Heather Whelan
In Voyage of the Ika Roa author Heather Whelan relates the story of how she and then husband, Tim, built a boat and sailed it from England to New Zealand. The couple had no boatbuilding or sailing experience, but they set to and built Ika Roa, a Wharram-designed catamaran.
The voyage began with a trip across the Bay of Biscay, to Spain and Portugal. The Atlantic crossing took the Ika Roa and her crew far from land for the first time. Heather relates her adventures in the Caribbean Islands, Venezuela and the Dutch Antilles before they reached the Panama Canal.
While cruising the Pacific, Heather became fascinated by Polynesian history and the islanders’ way of life. Friendships among the cruising community and with locals enriched the journey. Two years after leaving Falmouth in England, Ika Roa arrived in New Zealand after sailing more than 10,000 nautical miles. The book is available from BigWords-Books website or from Heather at heatherwhelan2 [at] gmail [dot] com.
The Crazy Idea by Heather Whelan
Dylan would like to be a cat. One day, he wakes from his nap to find that he has grown fur! He finds a mouse to chase, a bird to follow and a tree to climb. But he also finds that the baby pulls his tail and the dog chases him around the house. Being a cat isn’t so much fun after all…
Heather was inspired to write this story after listening to a five-year-old recount eating cat food at news time in class one morning.
The Crazy Idea has gorgeous illustrations by Denise Whitmore.
Copies are available for $15 from https://heatherwhelanwriting.wordpress.com/.
Love at the End of the Road by Rae Roadley
Soon after returning to her hometown in Northland, New Zealand to work as a journalist, Rae meets farmer Rex Roadley through a rural dating service.
Rex’s beef and sheep farm at Batley, on the Kaipara Harbour, has been in his family for almost a century, however now the only evidence of the spot’s fascinating historic past is a magnificent two-storeyed villa standing alone on the point.
Neither Rae nor Rex are youngsters and their love affair, relationship and lives together go through many twists and turns.
Meanwhile Rae, a lifelong city dweller, learns to cope with mud, managing a large house and garden, the intricacies of farming, and the frustrations of life in the backblocks, while getting to know the locals and assorted animals – from wild kittens to wild bulls.
Rae’s charming story is beautifully written from the heart. Not only does she find love with Rex, but she finds out more about herself than she knew. Woven through her account are stories about the great house itself at Batley and the surrounding countryside. (First published by Penguin).
To get a hard copy, visit: www.raeroadley.co.nz/. To get the ebook on Amazon: Click here.
Stone Wall Country by Catherine Ballard
This is the latest by Catherine Ballard and second in the series about dry stone walls in Northland, New Zealand.
It outlines the fascinating story of dry stone walls in the Bay of Islands and Kaikohe areas, the origin of the stones and the people who built with them.
Carefully researched, Stone Wall Country is based on historical records backed up by the recollections of living people who gave an overview of how the walls were built.
These districts have hundreds of kilometres of dry stone walls. They are a defining feature of the landscape and it is no coincidence that the topography is dominated by small volcanic cones. The walls have become as much a part of the landscape as the volcanic cones from which they originated. Contact: ballardonthehill [at] gmail [dot] com
Lost by Heather Whelan
It’s the 1860s and orphaned brothers Tom and Jim, together with their young sister Kate, are leaving England bound for Australia. Their plan is to join the gold rush and make their fortune. When Kate accidentally ends up on a ship bound for New Zealand the boys have to set off without her–and Kate has to fend for herself in a strange new country. Will the boys find gold? And will Kate ever see her brothers again?
Lost is available from Wheelers and from the author: Contact www.heatherwhelanwriting.wordpress.com Price: $20+postage (generally $5 within NZ). (Can be delivered locally)
Magpie and the Morning Light by Anna Williams
Magpie and the Morning Light Is a fantasy tale about a selfish magpie who loves to steal anything bright and shiny that catches his eye. However, his thieving habit causes trouble in the forest, where he lives with all the other birds, and they decide to teach him a lesson. What do they do?
The story sends a strong message that selfishness won’t be tolerated in society and others will fight back. The illustrations are by a local Whangarei artist and are rich and colourful. Although this book is aimed at around 5-8-year-olds, even a very young child would enjoy the pictures.
Copies are available from the author and they sell for $20 each plus P&P. Email: annawilliams.writer [at] gmail [dot] com
