New Zealand’s women writers are shaping the stories we escape into, reflect on and carry with us long after the final page. From quiet home offices and busy kitchen tables to cafés fuelled by coffee and pastries, these authors share how they write, what they’re reading and the advice that keeps them creating. Ahead of another year of books, ideas and beach reads, some of our favourite local voices open up about their craft, their inspirations and the stories they can’t put down.
Nicky Pellegrino, 61, Auckland
Author of Marry Me In Italy and Tiny Pieces Of Us
What are the best books you’ve read recently?
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans was original, heartwarming and funny. Life And Death And Giants by Ron Rindo was sad, unique and brilliant. Last One Out by Jane Harper was a slow-burning small-town mystery.
What are your hopes for 2026?
For all the people I love to survive and thrive. Workwise, I’m in the middle of something new and different, but I can’t talk about it yet.
Where do you write?
In my garden studio, with Harry my greyhound snoozing on the sofa. I also write in bed, on the sofa and in cafés. I love creating something from nothing, dreaming up ideas and going to Italy for research. Unfortunately, being a novelist has not made me wildly rich, so I’m also juggling a lot of other work.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.
What are your New Year’s resolutions?
To make time for fun and pleasure, from dinners with friends and planting my garden to riding my horse on the beach.
Zoë Rankin, 37, Rotorua
Author of The Vanishing Place
What are you reading this summer?
Water by John Boyne and Trent Dalton’s Gravity Let Me Go.
What are your hopes for 2026?
To meet my readers at writers’ festivals.
Where do you write?
I like to write somewhere with coffee and pastry. Pain aux raisins and caffeine are exceptionally good motivators. I used to have an office, but my five-year-old sleeps in it now, so I have a desk in my bedroom, surrounded by books and my husband’s socks.
What do you love about writing?
Creating characters, scenes and stories, then developing them with incredible editors, although I do get anxious sharing pieces of myself with
the world.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
“When I’m lost,” said Tiny Dragon, “I find it helps to go back to the beginning and try to remember why I started.” That’s from James Norbury’s Big Panda And Tiny Dragon.
Tina Makereti, 52, Kāpiti Coast
Author of The Mires and This Compulsion In Us
Where do you write?
I just need silence, a laptop and time. The act of writing is just a joy and connecting with readers is amazing.
What are the best books you’ve read recently?
The Ministry Of Time by Kaliane Bradley and Surplus Women by Michelle Duff. I’m also looking forward to reading All Her Lives by Ingrid Horrocks. This summer, I want to focus on short stories because my next book is a collection of short fiction. They’re fun, and can be weird and experimental.
What are your hopes for 2026?
It’d be nice if people stopped behaving like fascists! Freedom for Palestine and tax the rich so we can feed the poor.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Treat others as you’d like to be treated. Most of what I hope for would be possible if we just did that.
What are your New Year’s resolutions?
The act of setting intentions is important – mine are usually about health, and learning to make rēwena and sourdough.
Catherine Chidget, 55, Cambridge
Author of The Book Of Guilt and The Axeman’s Carnival
What’s your favourite thing about writing?
There’s nothing like the rush of creating something beautiful. Sometimes I spend days – days! – moving a character across a room.
Where do you write?
I write at home, in bed, on the couch, in my writing room and in my University of Waikato office. Varying locations keeps it fresh.
What are the best books you’ve read recently?
Emma Neale’s Maybe Baby, which is out in May, is about a man who has a uterus transplant so he can carry an embryo conceived with his late wife. It’s wild, deeply human and moving. I also loved Sigrid Nunez’s The Vulnerables, a study of two strangers and a parrot who stumble into companionship during a citywide shutdown.
What are your hopes for 2026?
I’d like a less divided world where the arts are not seen as a luxury or an afterthought. A year where the work flows, where I have enough time for the people I love and where I spend less time on social media so I can finish the next book.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Sard soap for really stubborn stains!
Olivia Spooner, 50, Auckland
Author of The American Boys and The Girl From London
What do you love about writing?
Imagining living different lives in different times, then placing characters in those eras. But transferring what I see in my head on to the page is not as much fun.
Where do you write?
At the kitchen table, on the back deck, curled up on the window seat in the sun and at a local café. Moving around helps my creativity and silence – or at least an absence of interruptions is golden.
What are the best books you’ve read recently?
A Great Act Of Love by Heather Rose because I loved her novel Bruny. Wreck by Catherine Newman made me laugh out loud. Lily King’s Heart The Lover was my favourite of 2025 – I’ve already started to read it again.
What are your hopes for 2026?
Calm, clarity and more time in nature. This will be my first year writing full-time and I’m excited to see how I respond creatively.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Find joy in the little things.
Josie Shapiro, 43, Auckland
Author of Good Things Come And Go
What are you reading this summer?
I loved Heart The Lover by Lily King – an easy yet heartbreaking read. Also, the short story collection Pastoral Care by John Prins is powerful and moving.
What are your hopes for 2026?
Peace for the entire world. Closer to home, a year of quiet bliss and good health.
Where do you write?
On the computer whenever I get the time – ideally three hours every morning after coffee and yoga.
What do you love about writing?
The satisfaction of a great sentence. The pleasure of a scene well timed and letters from readers telling you how they’ve been affected by your work. The bad stuff is when you want to write an emotionally true story, it can feel like nothing you write is ever quite good enough.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
This quote from Jodie Foster’s speech at the Emmys: “Love and work equals art.”
What are your New Year’s resolutions?
To finish the first draft of my next novel, climb a V6 [intermediate wall] at the indoor bouldering gym and learn the cello!
Laura Keenan, 45, Wellington
Author of The Space Between and Toitū Te Whenua
What are the best books you’ve read recently?
The Names by Florence Knapp for its engaging plot, The Wedding People by Alison Espach because it was so much fun and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood for haunting me just the right amount.
What’s your favourite local novel?
Tina Makereti’s The Mires.
What are you reading this summer?
The Covenant Of Water by Abraham Verghese and The Sentence by Louise Erdrich – they were lent to me in 2024 and it’s getting embarrassing!
What are your hopes for 2026?
A world where echo chambers and nasty silos are broken down because we’re mostly just regular people muddling through as best we can.
Where do you write?
At my standing desk in my study, although ergonomic benefits are cancelled out by the hours I spend writing in front of the TV.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Choose your battles.
What are your New Year’s resolutions?
To face my fears and do a total-immersion noho marae [overnight marae stay].
Rachel Paris, 49, Auckland
Author of See How They Fall
What are you reading this summer?
I’ll start with Josie Shapiro’s new book Good Things Come And Go because Catherine Chidgey described it as “poignant, redemptive, electrifying” and I can’t wait for Erin Palmisano’s third book in her Secrets series, The Secrets Of The Lost Vineyard.
What are your hopes for 2026?
Cheaper groceries, reverse ageing and world peace.
Where do you write?
My ideal work conditions are a tidy desk and no interruptions, but my usual writing habitat is chaotic, noisy and full of intrusions – my house with my family coming and going.
What do you love about writing?
Being an adult with imaginary friends, wearing stretchy clothes and meeting so many wonderful book people. But there’s never enough time and
too much caffeine!
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
No regrets.
What’s your New Year’s resolution?
To be as nice to people as I am to my dogs.
