Amber McWilliams is a reader and writer, teacher and learner. She is one of Tamaki Makaurau's many lovers and lives on Auckland's North Shore with her family.

Anna Jackson lives in Island Bay, Wellington, and lectures in the English programme at Victoria University. She has published four collections of poetry with Auckland University Press, and the poems in Turbine will be included in a fifth collection forthcoming in 2014.

Anna Jaquiery is of French-Malaysian descent and currently lives in Melbourne. Her short stories and poems have appeared in various journals, including Southerly (Australia), Bravado (NZ) and Magma (UK). Her first novel, The Lying-Down Room, will be published in April 2014 by Macmillan UK.

Avi Duckor-Jones has a Bachelor of Arts in theatre studies and a bachelor of law from Otago University and has been admitted to the High Court as a barrister and solicitor of New Zealand. He has travelled extensively, spending his time primarily in New York and Hawaii. He worked on his first novel, Swim, while studying for an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2013.

Beth Rust is a first-year student studying law and history at Victoria University. Aside from writing, she enjoys having coffee in seaside cafes on rainy afternoons and the smell of new books when you hold them up to your face and turn the pages really fast.

Bill Manhire's poem first found its way into the world as a series of tweets in memory of Ralph Hotere, who died in February 2013. Bill notes: 'Ralph's pallbearers found his coffin surprisingly heavy, and there seemed to be some obvious reasons why.'

Bill Manhire's Selected Poems are published by VUP in New Zealand, and by Carcanet in the UK.

Brent Kininmont lives in Tokyo. Long before moving to the Kanto Plain, he lived on the Canterbury Plains.

Bryan Walpert is the author of the poetry collections Etymology and A History of Glass; the short story collection Ephraim's Eyes; and the scholarly monograph Resistance to Science in Contemporary American Poetry. ‘Oakura’ is from his recently completed poetry manuscript, Native Bird, for which he is seeking a publisher. He is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Massey University's School of English & Media Studies.

http://bryanwalpert.com

Catherine Vidler's collection of poems Furious Triangle was published by Puncher and Wattmann in 2011. She has a second collection forthcoming. Cath is the editor of trans-Tasman literary magazine Snorkel (www.snorkel.org.au)

Cath says: I made ‘Spirally’ from Charles Darwin's ‘On the movements and habits of climbing plants’. I searched for instances of the word ‘spirally’ in the text and listed them in order of appearance, as separated by all the other ‘-ly’ words which occurred between each instance (also listed in order). The poem finished when the ‘-ly’ word following ‘spirally’ was also ‘spirally’.

Charmaine's poems have appeared in the 4th Floor Literary Journal, a fine line, Blackmail Press, Shot Glass Journal and The Fib Review. Her first collection of poems, Licorice, was published in 2012. She studied performance music in the past and is still addicted to Beethoven.

Chris Tse lives and works in Wellington. His poetry has recently appeared in Landfall, JAAM, Snorkel, Poetry NZ and Cha. His first full-length collection, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, will be published by Auckland University Press in 2014.

Claire Orchard was born in Wainuiomata, grew up various Hutt Valley locations, and now lives in Wellington, where she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2013. She has had work published in Penduline Press, the 2012 Eat Your Words anthology, JAAM, 4th Floor and Landfall.

Deborah Potter is a Wellington writer and statistician. The story featured in Turbine was inspired by her demographic interests, in particular the ageing population. Deb is interested in the future of storytelling and interactive fiction in particular.

Elizabeth Russell currently lives in Hawke’s Bay where she works in the arts sector and as a freelance writer. She was a member of the 2009 MA class at the IIML.

Emma Hislop completed an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2013. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction.

Frances Samuel lives in Wellington and works as a museum exhibition writer. 'I see the hungry caterpillar' was very probably inspired by reading the Eric Carle book over and over to her small child.

Frankie McMillan is a short story writer and poet. She is the author of The Bag Lady's Picnic and other stories and a poetry collection, Dressing for the Cannibals. Recent poetry has appeared in Best New Zealand Poems, Landfall, Turbine, Sport, Jaam, Snorkel, Trout, The Cincinnati Review and Shenandoah.

Gay Buckingham has been writing off and on for the last ten years or so, mostly working at short fiction, which has been published online, in Takahe, and broadcast by Radio New Zealand. Gay has spent most of her professional life as a mediator in Dunedin and completed an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2013.

The first extract featured in Turbine is a flashback to the childhood of Brett Stewart, one of the less attractive adult characters in a novel she worked on in 2013, Ruth Munro, Plainly. The second extract is set in the local museum, where much of the novel’s action takes place.

Hannah Mettner is a Wellington writer. She completed her Masters at the IIML in 2012 and has spent this year recovering by writing poetry.

Helena Wiśniewska Brow is a Wellington writer with a weakness for non-fiction. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2013 with a memoir on the impact of her father’s childhood deportation from Poland during World War II. The piece published here is an extract from Give Us This Day, for which she won the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing.

Hinemoana Baker descends from Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Ngāi Tahu, England and Bavaria. Her third poetry collection, waha | mouth, is slated for publication in 2014. She usually works as a teacher, editor, musician and brief intervention smoking cessation telephone counsellor. She is delighted to be spending 2014 as writer in residence at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters. More information at www.hinemoana.co.nz.

Jennifer Compton was born in Wellington and now lives in Melbourne. She is a poet and playwright who also writes prose. Her book of poetry, This City, won the Kathleen Grattan Award and was published by Otago University Press in 2011. And in 2013 her poem ‘Now You Shall Know’ won the Newcastle Poetry Prize.

‘The Shock’ is part of a series called Now You Shall Know written in response to her mother's death in 2011 while Jennifer was touring New Zealand to launch and publicise This City. She received a phone call from her sister informing her the end was near while she was staying with Johanna Aitchison in Palmerston North.

Jessica Todd completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2013.

Joan Fleming is the author of The Same as Yes (VUP, 2011). She is currently working on a collection of failed love poems, and will begin a PhD in ethnopoetics in Melbourne in 2014.

John Summers' prose has previously appeared in Turbine as well as Hue & Cry, JAAM and Takahē. He has also contributed travel writing to the Listener, NZ Herald and The Press, and writes about the outdoors for the website upcountry.co.nz. His first book will be published by Hue & Cry Press in 2014.

Jo McNeice completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2013. She lives in Wellington.

Kate Kilkenny is from Wellington. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2013, working on a collection of essays.

Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book of poems three days in a wishing well was published by VUP in 2012. A selection of her work appeared in Oxford Poets 13. Her second book is forthcoming from VUP in 2014.

Kevin O'Donnell works as a Nurse Educator in ICU and in 2013 completed the MA in Creative writing at the IIML. He is addicted to building mountainbike tracks.

Kirsten Le Harivel completed her Masters at the Institute of Modern Letters in 2013. Her work has been published in Blackmail Press, Penduline Press and the 4th Floor. She is a member of the Conversations Across Borders project and lives on the Kāpiti Coast.

Kirsten McDougall's debut book of interconnected stories, The Invisible Rider, was published in 2012. She received the Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writers’ Bursary in 2013 to work on the novel she is currently writing, titled The Underground. Her writing in Turbine is a short extract from that novel.

Lee Posna grew up in New Jersey and lives with his wife, poet Therese Lloyd, in Paekakariki. He's very happy to be part of the Wellington writing community.

A Trancept Rose and Five Long Lancet Windows is an ekphrastic poem based on an imaginary stained glass window with six panels — each section of the poem is a window portraying conflations of biblical and 20th century figures. The epigraph is from Shelley’s vision of a utopian future in his early poem ‘Queen Mab’.

Linda Bennett lives in Wellington, where she works part-time as a registered nurse. She has just completed an MA at the IIML, where she wrote a novel exploring the clash of faith, fundamentalism, love and psychedelic drugs in the life of a theology student living in 1970s South Africa.

Linley Boniface lives in Wellington and completed an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2013.

Lynley Edmeades resides in Dunedin. She was once the winner of the Oraka Heights School cross-country competition.

Mark O'Flynn's first collection of short stories was published in Australia this year by Spineless Wonders. His novels include Grassdogs (2006), and The Forgotten World (2013). He has also published four collections of poetry.

Marty Smith grew up in remote hill country between Pahiatua and the sea. This is one of the quieter poems in Horse with Hat, which is coming out with VUP in February 2014.

Mary Ruefle is an American poet whose latest book is Trances Of The Blast (Wave Books, 2013).

Matt Bialostocki is a Wellington-based writer, photographer, and bookseller. He completed an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2013. See more of Matt’s work at www.mattbialostocki.com

Tracey Hill, Caroline Foote, Robin Fleming, Rose Cook, Griet Dierckxsens, Matt Vickers, Josh Greenberg, Frances Samuel.

About this poem:

Earlier this year I was asked to read at the IIML alumni event on behalf of my MA class 2003. There were 10 people in my year, and when I thought about reading at the event I knew that most of them wouldn’t be able to be there. But I wanted to somehow include everyone’s voice, not just my own, and so I emailed those I could find and asked them to send me one line inspired by their MA year, which I would then — with absolutely minimal interference — make into an ephemeral poem of sorts. This is the poem I put together, and perhaps it gives a small sense of our class. Frances Samuel.

Mercedes Webb-Pullman completed an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2011. Her work has appeared online and in print. Her CNF ebook, Looking for Kerouac, was published by Hammer & Anvil Books in August 2013.

Michael Hall has been published in NZ and international journals, including Landfall, Meanjin, and Queens Quarterly. He lives in Dunedin.

Nina Powles is a graduate student of English at Victoria University of Wellington. She is interested in prose, mainly creative non-fiction.

Rachel has a fine arts degree in film from Canterbury University and works as a librarian for the Ministry of Justice. This excerpt is the first chapter from The Frozen Woman, a novel about the wife of a disgraced Ponzi schemer, written towards an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2013.

Raqi Syed is a visual effects artist based in Wellington. This story is an extract from Raise Ravens, a novel she is currently working on as part of her MA year at the IIML.

Rebecca Styles is a creative writing PhD student at Massey University. She completed an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2011. Rebecca has published short stories in local journals and anthologies, and blogs about New Zealand books at nzlit101.blogspot.co.nz. Restoration Island was inspired by a trip to Kapiti Island.

Rose Collins completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML in 2010. She has had short fiction published in Turbine and Sport and her poetry has appeared in the NZ Poetry Society’s anthology, Building a Time Machine (2012). She lives on Banks Peninsula. The quotation used in this poem is from Robert Falcon Scott’s diary, 18 January 1911.

Sarah Jane Barnett is a writer, tutor, and book reviewer who lives in Wellington. Her first collection of poems, A Man Runs into a Woman, was published by Hue & Cry Press in 2012, and was a finalist in the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Awards. Her work has appeared in various publications including Sport, Landfall, Best New Zealand Poems, JAMM, Trout, and Southerly. She is currently completing a creative PhD in the field of ecopoetics. Sarah blogs at: theredroom.org

Sara Martin was raised in New Jersey on local politics, hairless cats and rocks. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and is a guest lecturer at the IIML, Victoria University.

SL Foot’s Turbine extract was taken from an as yet unnamed children’s book she worked on while studying for an MA in creative writing at the IIML in 2013. The book was inspired by her interest in how the modern world perceives magic, and how a preindustrial world would view technology.

Sugar Magnolia Wilson has recently returned from a UNESCO-Aschberg Residency for artists at the Instituto Sacatar in Brazil. The Moon and My ‘House’ was written during the residency as a prose poem book review of Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84 and as an ekphrastic response to the work of South Korean artist Jiyoung Chae. Moon-Baller was also written in Brazil and is just about heartache. Magnolia has just bought her first home; a micro-villa in Aro Valley. You should come and have tea sometime — magnoliawilson@gmail.com.

Trisha Hanifin completed an MA in creative writing from the Auckland University of Technology in 2010. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of short fiction.

Vivienne R Smith has had poetry published in Takahē, Blackmail Press, Deep South, and Junctures and prose published in 4th Floor. She completed the two year creative writing course at Hagley High School, prior to writing a creative non-fiction memoir in the IIML’s MA in Creative Writing in 2013. A hydrogeologist by training, and a public servant by necessity, she has finally recognised that her mind calms and her heart unfastens when she writes.

Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle's work has appeared in publications such as Landfall, Best NZ Poems, broadsheet, and Versal. Her book, Autobiography of a Marguerite, will be published in 2014 by Hue & Cry Press.