# Barbara Else

Barbara Helen Else MNZM (born 1947), also known as Barbara Neale, is a New Zealand writer, editor, and playwright. She has written novels for adults and children, plays, short stories and articles and has edited anthologies of children's stories. She has received a number of awards and fellowships including the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature, the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal and the Victoria University of Wellington's Writer's Fellowship.

## Biography

Barbara Else (also published as Barbara Neale) was born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1947. She lived in Riverton until age two, when her family moved to Wellington. She has lived in various parts of New Zealand, including Auckland, Oamaru, Christchurch and Dunedin as well as in San Diego, California.
She graduated with an MA from Otago University in 1969 and has worked as a university tutor, an editor and a freelance writer. Her first husband, Jim Neale, was a physician. They had two daughters.
She has served on the New Zealand Book Council and on the National Council of the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc). Barbara Else and her husband, Chris Else, were instrumental in setting up both the New Zealand Association of Literary Agents (NZALA) and the New Zealand Association of Manuscript Assessors (NZAMA)
She was a judge for the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2004 and Judge Convenor for the 2014 New Zealand Children's Book Awards, and has appeared at local and international writer and reader festivals.
As of 2018, Else lives in Dunedin, having stayed there after her residency in 2016. She works as a literary agent and manuscript assessor with Chris Else who is also a writer, as is her daughter Emma Neale. In her 2023 memoir, Laughing at the Dark, Else details her treatment for cancer.

## Awards and residencies

Else's books have won or been shortlisted for a number of awards and several of her children's books have been named as Storylines Notable Books. Her first novel The Warrior Queen was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her next title, Gingerbread Husbands, was shortlisted for the Booksellers BookData Award. The Travelling Restaurant (the first in her fantasy quartet for children, Tales of Fontania) won the 2012 Junior Fiction Honour Award in the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards, the Esther Glen Medal in the 2012 LIANZA Awards and a White Raven Award and was named as a 2012 IBBY NZ Honour Book for Writing.
In 1998, Else was the NZ/Australia Exchange Writer (Brisbane Writers’ Festival, Sydney Spring Festival). Else was a visiting writer at Vancouver International Writers' Festival and the Winnipeg International Writers' Festival. She was Writer in Residence at Victoria University of Wellington in 1999. In 2004, she was awarded a Creative New Zealand Scholarship in Letters and in 2005, she became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for Services to Literature.
In 2016, Else went to Dunedin as the University of Otago College of Education / Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence, a move that led to her moving permanently to that city. In the same year, she was awarded the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal and Lecture Award. She delivered the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal Lecture, titled "Making it up as I go along, or Finding the Cornerstones of Creativity", on 3 April 2016. She also delivered the Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival in 2018. In 2019 she was presented with the Ignition Festival Award for outstanding contribution to children's literature.
In 2024 Else was named New Zealand Society of Authors President of Honour.