Melanie is Director of the New Zealand operation of Allen & Unwin. Allen & Unwin is Australia’s leading independent publisher and has been voted Australia’s Publisher of the Year twelve times, including the inaugural award in 1992. It publishes around 250 new titles each year including literary and commercial fiction, a broad range of general non fiction, academic and professional titles and books for children and young adults. Melanie completed a Masters in Publishing in 1993 and became a sales representative with Cassell Publishers in the United Kingdom. She subsequently joined the sales team of Oxford University Press, first in the UK then in New Zealand. After a stint with the Paper Plus Group, Melanie joined Allen & Unwin in 2006.

Melanie was the president of PANZ (Publishers Association of NZ) from 2015 – 2017 and is currently the immediate past president.

The Trust welcomed Melanie as a trustee in November 2014 and as Chair of the Trust in June 2019.

Nicki is a qualified chartered accountant living in Devonport with her family.

While beginning her career in audit with Deloitte, she has worked across a range of industries including investment banking, publishing, and in several countries including the UK, China, and South Korea.

In the last five years Nicki has worked with several not-for-profit entities preparing both management and financial accounts, and in her current role as a Chartered Accountant with accountants Gannaway Mercer, she consults to not-for profits, and small to medium business’s on all aspects of accounting and tax. Her interests outside work include enjoying literature and cooking.

Nicki joined the trust in October 2016.

David is a children’s writer and high school teacher based in South Auckland. He grew up in Māngere and attended Māngere College. Later, David graduated with a Masters in Social Anthropology from Auckland University, majoring in Māori and Pacific Studies. He then trained as a teacher and taught Drama and English at Tangaroa College in Ōtara for 23 years. David has also worked as a researcher and journalist and writes books and reading resources for, and with, elders, teachers, parents and young people. He’s written nearly 60 books and delivered reading and writing workshops throughout Aotearoa and in the Cook Islands.  He’s also assisted community groups to write and publish their own stories including the Auckland Tuvalu Community Trust, Vagahau Niue Trust and the New Zealand Kiribati community. At the end of 2020 David left his teaching job to focus on projects that enhance literacy in Aotearoa and the Pacific. David lives in Manukau with his wife Debbie, who is Samoan and also a teacher, and their two daughters.

David has joined the Trust in March 2022.

Charlotte is the editor and publisher of Toitoi: A Journal for Young Writers and Artists. Toitoi is a quarterly journal that publishes the work of young New Zealanders aged 5-13. In 2016, Toitoi was named Best Primary Resource at the NZ Content Counts Education Awards and was a finalist in the Best Design Awards in 2017.

Charlotte graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a Bachelor of Commerce in Management Studies. She was a magazine editor in London for many years and also worked as a publications manager for PriceWaterhouseCoopers and a project manager for Goldman Sachs. She lives in Devonport with her family.

Charlotte joined the Trust in February 2018.

David is a secondary English teacher at Northcote College on the North Shore of Tāmaki Makaurau.  He has worked for many years with young writers to encourage them to see themselves as writers and to tell their stories.  His academic research has focused on reading for pleasure and the involvement of whānau to support students’ reading at secondary school.   He was a 2012 Woolf Fisher Fellow and a 2015 Fulbright Distinguished Teacher.

David joined the Trust in March 2022.

Victor is an award-winning writer and producer of Samoan (Iva) and Scottish (Dundee) descent   His plays include My Name is Gary Cooper and Black Faggot which have been produced nationally and internationally.  Through his theatre entity, FCC he has also produced several plays including Tusiata Avia’s Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, which played  Off-Broadway earlier this year.

He has held several writing residencies throughout New Zealand, including MKWC (2018) and was also the Fulbright/Creative New Zealand Pacific writer in residence at the University of Hawaii in 2006.  He leads the Maori and Pasifika creative writing workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University and is attached to various projects in theatre, film and television.

Victor joined the Trust in May 2020.

Whiti is an award-winning novelist and playwright of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa and Pākehā descent, based in Wellington. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing (Script writing) from the International Institute of Modern Letters. She is the author of four novels: The Graphologist’s Apprentice, the award-winning YA novel Bugs and Legacy.     Update 12 May 2022: Whiti has just won the 2022 Jann Medlicott Acorn Award for fiction in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for her fourth novel Kurangaituku (2021).

She is also co-editor, with Witi Ihimaera, of an anthology of Māori myths — Pūrākau.

Whiti has twice held a MKWC Residency, (2012/2017) and has been involved with Te Papa Tupu, an incubator programme for Māori writers, as a writer, a mentor and a judge. She is also a board member of the Māori Literature Trust and joined the Michael King Writers Centre Trust in June 2019.

Anthony is one of New Zealand’s foremost writers on contemporary art, and a regular contributor to Artforum and Metro. In 2013, he was Critical Studies Fellow at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan, and in 2015 was New Zealand’s Reviewer of the Year. His first book, This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art (Auckland University Press, 2016), was a finalist in the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. His latest book, The Mirror Steamed Over: Love and Pop in London, 1962 was published in May 2020.

Anthony has re-joined the Trust in August 2020 after a six month hiatus following a one year term (Feb 2018-Feb 2019). He held a MKWC eight week residency in 2017.