Kawerau born Sacha, is an award-winning children´s writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. She is the author of picture books Keys/Ngā Kī, The Marble Maker/Te Kaihanga Māpere, and the 2019 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, The Bomb/Te Pohū – all published by HUIA and illustrated by her partner in both books and life, Josh Morgan. Sacha is also involved in writing for children’s television. She has written for both The Kiddets and The Book Hungry Bears, two animated shows produced by Pukeko Pictures. Sacha loves lots of things including stop motion animation, daydreaming, biscuits, books, dancing, curly dogs, space noodles and woolly mammoths named Stanley.

Chigozie Obioma is a Nigerian writer and assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2015, he was named one of "100 Global Thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine. He is the first author in Booker Prize history to be nominated for their first and second book, with The Fishermen shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, and An Orchestra of Minorities shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

Kara Jackson is the daughter of country folks. She is the author of Bloodstone Cowboy (Haymarket Books). She is the 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate and the 2018 Youth Poet Laureate of Chicago. Her work investigates a trail of language that leads from the South to the North. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Jackson attempts to document her lineage of divine womanhood in a country that demands its erasure. Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Frontier Poetry, Rookie Mag, Nimrod Literary Journal and Saint Heron. She has two articles published in Blavity. She has two poems featured in the latest anthology edited by Kevin Coval, The End of Chiraq. Jackson is a TEDx speaker. She will attend Smith College in the fall of 2019. Her EP “A Song for Every Chamber of the Heart” is out now on all streaming platforms.

Tāmati Kruger, from the Ngāti Koura, Ngāti Rongo and Te Urewera hapū of Tūhoe, is a Māori advocate and social and political analyst who has dedicated his career to the development of his iwi. Tāmati was instrumental in securing the largest Treaty of Waitangi settlement to date for the Central North Island Iwi Collective, and was chief negotiator of the Tūhoe-Te Urewera Treaty of Waitangi Settlement, which included a Crown apology for historical grievances, a social service management plan for the Tūhoe rohe and a financial and commercial redress package. The settlement also included legislative changes to transfer Te Urewera National Park to its own separate legal entity, looked after by the Te Urewera Board, of which Tāmati is chair. He was a finalist in the 2012 New Zealander of the Year awards, Supreme Winner of the 2014 Marae Investigates Māori of the Year, and in 2015 was a recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award by Victoria University.

Dame Anne Salmond is a distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and a leading social scientist. She has written a series of prize-winning books about Māori life, European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific that have received much international recognition.

Dame Anne Salmond is a distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and a leading social scientist. She has written a series of prize-winning books about Māori life, European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific that have received much international recognition.

Chigozie Obioma is a Nigerian writer and assistant professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2015, he was named one of "100 Global Thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine. He is the first author in Booker Prize history to be nominated for their first and second book, with The Fishermen shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, and An Orchestra of Minorities shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

Tāmati Kruger, from the Ngāti Koura, Ngāti Rongo and Te Urewera hapū of Tūhoe, is a Māori advocate and social and political analyst who has dedicated his career to the development of his iwi. Tāmati was instrumental in securing the largest Treaty of Waitangi settlement to date for the Central North Island Iwi Collective, and was chief negotiator of the Tūhoe-Te Urewera Treaty of Waitangi Settlement, which included a Crown apology for historical grievances, a social service management plan for the Tūhoe rohe and a financial and commercial redress package. The settlement also included legislative changes to transfer Te Urewera National Park to its own separate legal entity, looked after by the Te Urewera Board, of which Tāmati is chair. He was a finalist in the 2012 New Zealander of the Year awards, Supreme Winner of the 2014 Marae Investigates Māori of the Year, and in 2015 was a recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award by Victoria University.

Dame Anne Salmond is a distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and a leading social scientist. She has written a series of prize-winning books about Māori life, European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific that have received much international recognition.

Dame Anne Salmond is a distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, and a leading social scientist. She has written a series of prize-winning books about Māori life, European voyaging and cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific that have received much international recognition.