Rachel Paris, Megan Nicol Reed & Josie Shapiro in conversation with Tina Shaw about the power of fiction and how they make their stories come alive.

Come and join panellists Rachel Paris, Megan Nicol Reed and Josie Shapiro in conversation with chair Tina Shaw about the power of fiction and how they make their stories come alive. Books will be for sale.

Rachel Paris won the Phoenix Prize for the best manuscript in her Masters at Auckland University. She came to writing after a highly successful 20-year law career, specialising in fintech. She gained her Masters in Law at Harvard University. See How They Fall is her debut novel.

Megan Nicol Reed is the author of the bestselling One of Those Mothers and Other People’s Bodies. Thrice nominated for New Zealand’s best columnist, Megan Nicol Reed spent seven long years mining her life for a column that originally ran in the Sunday Star Times and then the New Zealand Herald’s Canvas magazine. The former journalist lives in Auckland with her husband, teenage daughter and elderly dog. 

Josie Shapiro is the bestselling author of Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, which won the inaugural Allen & Unwin Fiction Prize. A graduate of the University of Auckland’s Master of Creative Writing, Josie was a Sargeson Fellow in 2024 and was named one of the 2025 New Voices of Aotearoa. Her second novel, Good Things Come and Go, was named one of the best books of 2025 by the New Zealand Listener and The Spinoff. She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau with her husband and two daughters.

Tina Shaw is a novelist and editor who has received many awards for her work, including the CNZ Berlin Writers Residency and the University of Waikato Writer In Residence. She won the 2018 Storylines Tessa Duder Award with Ursa which was published in 2019 by Walker Books Australia and received a Storylines Notable Book Award. As editor, her 7th edition of the Bateman NZ Writer’s Handbook was published in 2023. Her novel manuscript A House Built on Sand won the 2023 Michael Gifkins Prize and was published in 2024 by Text Publishing, Melbourne. Tina works as a book reviewer, mentor, manuscript assessor, publisher, and is editor of the NZSA quarterly publication NZ Author. She lives in Whāingaroa Raglan.

This event is sponsored by Friends of Waikato Museum and Gallery and supported by Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand and Allen & Unwin.