Steph is an award-winning writer from Taranaki, New Zealand (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama, Te Ati Awa).
She spent fifteen years writing radio advertising before deciding to branch out and write pieces that were longer than thirty seconds.
She loves writing speculative fiction stories for children and young adults, and has written for the page, stage and screen.
Her first published work was ‘A Story of Rona’ which won its category in Playmarket’s ‘Plays for the Young’ competition in 2013.
In 2016, Steph was selected for the Māori Literature Trust’s writing incubator programme ‘He Papa Tupu’, and wrote her first YA fantasy novel, “Flight of the Fantail”, published by Huia Publishers. This was shortly followed by junior fiction novel, “Whetū Toa and the Magician” which was also published by Huia, and was a finalist in the 2019 New Zealand Children’s Book Awards.
She worked on the CBBC TV series ‘Mystic’ in 2020, and has two new novels for young people in the works, to be released soon.
In her spare time, Steph enjoys surf photography, bushwalks and aquascaping. She has two children, two goldfish and lots of books.
During her residency, our seventh for the year, Steph is working on a speculative fiction novel for 12-13 year olds. It tackles the issues of climate change and the precious role indigenous peoples have to play in nurturing and protecting our planet, as they have done since the dawn of time.