On Thursday 21st November, 40 Heaton students were lucky enough to meet two amazing New Zealand authors, Philippa Werry and Eileen Merriman.

The authors are on a road trip around New Zealand as part of the Storylines National Festival Tour with the aim to inspire young writers and readers.

Philippa Werry, from Wellington, is an amazing author. She has been writing since she was very young. In fact, her first story was published in a newspaper when she was just 6 years old! She writes non-fiction and fiction books, as well as poems and plays. Philippa also travels around a lot and always keeps a diary of her adventures as well as a journal every night.

Eileen Merriman lives in Auckland and writes fiction stories as well as being a full-time doctor! She specialises in haematology, which is the study of blood disorders. Her stories are often based around her job as a doctor. Eileen Merriman’s Young Adult novel “Catch Me When You Fall,” which we have in the LRC, is a bit like a Kiwi version of “The Fault in Our Stars.”

Eileen enjoys writing to help her relax after a long day at work.

The advice we took away from this Authors' Talk includes the importance of writing whenever, where-ever and as much as you can, how you need to be resilient and persistent, and, when you are stuck or blocked when writing fiction, make something really terrible happen to your main character!

By Alana and Freya