Our authors
Cadence Chung
Cadence Chung is a poet, student, and musician from Wellington. She began writing from an early age and started being published in her teen years. She is also a composer - her original musical In Blind Faith was put on at BATS Theatre in August 2022, and she debuted her Sapphic lyre compositions at LitCrawl 2022. anomalia is her first poetry book and was written during her final year of high school. Her writing takes inspiration from Tumblr text posts, antique stores, and dead poets.
Nicole Titihuia Hawkins
Nicole (Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa, Ngāti Pāhauwera) is a novice writer, avid home-baker and proud aunt. She lives in Pōneke and works at a local high school teaching English, Social Studies and tikanga Māori. Nicole has collaborated with other writers to host 'Coffee with Brownies', which are open mic events for people of colour to share their work in safe spaces. She co-hosted 'Rhyme Time', a regional youth event, with Poetry in Motion, to encourage a diverse range of youth to perform their incredible poetry. Nicole has work published by Overland, Capital Magazine, Blackmail Press and The Spinoff Ātea and credits her courageous students with inspiring her to write.
Follow her on Instagram.
Khadro Mohamed
Khadro Mohamed is a 24 year old writer and poet residing on the shores of Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She’s originally from Somalia and has a deep connection with her whakapapa, which is often a huge source of inspiration for her poetry. You can find bits of her writing floating around Newtown in Food Court Books and in online magazines such as: Starling, Salient Magazine, Pantograph Punch, The Spinoff and more.
Rachel O’Neill
Rachel is a Pākehā storyteller who was raised in the Waikato and currently lives and works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Kāpiti Coast. Rachel enjoys collaborating with writers, artists and filmmakers on publications, exhibitions and works for screen, and they are a founding member of the four-artist collaborative group, All the Cunning Stunts. A graduate of Elam School of Fine Arts (BA/BFA) and the International Institute of Modern Letters (MA), Rachel was selected for the 2017 Aotearoa Short Film Lab, received a 2018 SEED Grant (NZWG/NZFC) for feature film development, and held a 2019 Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre. Their debut book, One Human in Height (Hue & Cry Press) was published in 2013. As a queer non-binary storyteller Rachel strives to represent the longing for connection and the humour and strangeness that characterise human experience.
Tate Fountain
Tate is a writer, theatremaker, and DVD Special Features advocate splitting her time between Tāmaki Makaurau and Tauranga. She is a current member of the Starling editorial committee, and also works as the coordinator for samesame but different, Aotearoa New Zealand’s LGBTQIA+ Writers and Readers Festival. As an assistant director, actor, and stage manager, she’s worked with Auckland Theatre Company, Binge Culture, and the Pop-up Globe, as well as at Basement Theatre. Her poetry has been published in eel, Aniko Press Magazine, and Min-a-rets (Annexe), among others, and her screenwriting has been recognised by several feature development initiatives. She completed her Master of Arts (First Class Honours) at the University of Auckland, with a thesis on appropriations of the Eurydice myth by H.D., Carol Ann Duffy, and Céline Sciamma. Each month, she releases a new bouquet on Substack. She’s pretty much always thinking about films.
Henrietta Bollinger
Henrietta (they/them) is a Pākehā writer and activist, born and based in Te Whanganui a Tara, Wellington where they live with a fellow disabled artist and a cat.
When they were little, writing about disability felt too ordinary and mundane so they wrote about magic cats, butterfly sandwiches, and bands of thieves instead. They began writing about real life in 2009. Etta writes in a number of forms. They have had plays staged here and overseas and poetry published in Aotearoa and Australia.
During their studies at Te Herenga Waka University, they established the Salient column Token Cripple with a focus on disability rights. This became the basis of this book.
Articulations was funded by Creative New Zealand and The Copyright Licensing Trust. They were mentored by Pip Adam. Articulations is their first book.