Ashlee (Ngāti Awa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) is a writer of creative fiction and non-fiction, a health coach, educator and community volunteer. She holds a Master of Creative Writing and has published short stories in a number of collections.
Ashlee is a busy mama who combines her skills and passions into a number of different projects including launching Aotearoa’s biggest women’s wellbeing programme, a biannual journal for women’s health, running retreats, working in a one-day nature school, hosting an online women in business community and running a large online disability support group.
She loves to read and considers collecting books to be a completely different hobby to actually reading them. She is also an advocate of play and fostering a culture of fun and joy in the spaces she works in.
During her residency Ashlee is working on a young adult fiction novel that considers the impact of natural disasters on communities and explores the impact of mental health, as a group of teenagers’ resource themselves after a volcanic eruption. This is her third young adult novel, with the first languishing in a drawer, and the second currently going through the publishing process.