Judith Bryers Holloway has Ngapuhi, French, Norwegian and Irish/English ancestry, was brought up in King Country and Whanganui. She has lived most of adult life in Wellington but now lives in Levin.
Judith trained as a teacher and has taught, off and on, all age groups from 5 year-olds to polytech students. She moved from teaching to working in radio as scriptwriter/editor/producer of educational programmes for schools (from “Listen With Mother” to 7th Form Liberal Studies). In 1970s, she worked in television as a full-time scriptwriter/editor/storywriter for NZ’s first soap, Close To Home.
After a stint overseas, Judith moved into the book-publishing world as the Publishing Manager/ Commissioning Editor and writer of early reading books and other teaching resources for the NZ educational publisher, Price Milburn.
Judith has written many stories and articles for the NZ School Journals and for Radio NZ’s Storytime. Her first published children’s book was High Summer on the Heaphy Track in collaboration with renowned photographer Peter Bush (Collins, 1978). Notable educational resources devised: The Giggling Gertie Writing Dictionary (1986, Price Milburn) updated as The 1000 Words Book (2000); picture book A Good Mother Hen (Price Milburn 1988), the Concept Science series (Price Milburn,now OOP); Kupu Tuhituhi, a first Maori vocabulary book, and A First Bi-lingual Dictionary, Maori/English (pub.2000, avail. Cengage); Hine’s Rainbow published in both English and Māori (pub. 2001, Mallinson Rendel, now avail. only from no.8books@orcon.net.nz); first novel, Secrets & Spies, for 11-14-year-olds, featuring photographs of acted scenes, described as ‘a crowded, crazy fun book with everything in it’ pub.2007, No.8 Books.
In the last twenty or so years, Judith has run many workshops in writing children’s literature (including running a correspondence course with Frances Cherry), as well as taking creative writing with classes of kids; has selected and edited one collection of stories, essays and poetry (Coastlines, pub. Dunmore Press); written two screenplays and a stage play (none, as yet, performed); interviewed well-known trade unionist Bill Martin, and transcribed a variety of interviews with African migrants for The National Library of NZ Archives; written a number of new stories for radio; and ghost-written several personal Memoirs on commission.