About the Author

Ben Brown (Author)
Ben Brown (Waikato-Tainui), is the author of the evocative memoir A Fish in the Swim of the World, children's books, non-fiction, and short stories for children and adults, many of which have strong New Zealand nature themes. Many of his children's books are illustrated by long-time collaborator Helen Taylor. Helen and Ben's Te Reo edition of Fifty-Five Feathers - Nga Raukura Rima Tekau Ma Rima - was shortlisted for the 2005 LIANZA 2005 Book Awards; the English-language edition was shortlisted for the 2005 Russell Clark Award. Booming in the Night won Best Picture Book at the 2006 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards and was a 2006 Storylines Notable Picture Book. Brown was awarded the 2011 Maori Writers' Residency at the Michael King Writers' Centre. In 2020 he edited and published a volume of poetry that resulted out of a project with young people of Te Puna Wai o Tuhinapo, an Oranga Tamariki Youth Justice Residence, as part of Read NZ's Writers in Youth Justice programme. In 2021 Ben was made Aotearoa's first Reading Ambassador to champion literacy and literature as a pillar of wellbeing in New Zealand's youth.

Helen Taylor (Illustrator)
Helen Taylor is an award-winning children's book illustrator and an exhibiting artist with works in private collections around New Zealand and overseas. She has been illustrating books since 1992 and has been twice shortlisted for the LIANZA Children's Book Awards. In 2006, Helen won Best Picture Book in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, with A Booming in the Night, a collaboration with writer Ben Brown. Helen has also written and illustrated a number of picture books and in 2015 her book Kakapo Dance won a Storylines Notable Picture Book Award. Her book Pipi Kiwi was a Storylines Notable Te Reo Maori Book 2021. Helen lives in an old yellow house on a red-boned hill in the portside town of Lyttelton.