Shilo Kino (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Te Ata) is an award-winning author and journalist. Her debut novel, The Pōrangi Boy, won the Young Adult Fiction Award at the 2021 New Zealand Book Awards. In 2024, she released her first adult fiction novel, All That We Know, which explores activism, social media, and colonisation. It debuted at number one on the New Zealand fiction chart.
Shilo has written for Newsroom, The Spinoff, NZ Herald, North & South, The Guardian, and The Pantograph Punch, and was previously a TV journalist for Marae. In 2021, she was the Emerging Māori Writer in Residence at the Michael King Writers Centre. She wrote a regular te reo Māori column for Newsroom and was named a ‘40 under 40’ Auckland University graduate. She also co-hosted the Back to Kura podcast with Astley Nathan, documenting their reo Māori journey.
Shilo is passionate about te ao Māori and speaks Mandarin, having lived in Hong Kong. She is currently completing her master’s thesis at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland.
During her residency in Shanghai Shilo will be working on a new novel that spans centuries and blends historical fact with fiction. A multi-layered story that illuminates the hidden narratives of wāhine who fought for sovereignty, shaped the course of the history of Aotearoa, and left an indelible mark on the future.