Name: Secrets by the Seaside - St Heliers MITL
Start: 2026-05-07T08:00:00+12:00
Location: St Heliers Community Library (Saint Heliers)

Secrets by the Seaside - St Heliers MITL

Do you love mysteries and thrills?
The Ngaio Marsh Awards, in association with Auckland Libraries, invites booklovers to join a criminally good evening where five talented Kiwi writers will discuss the art and craft of storytelling, creating memorable characters, evoking setting, and what drew each of them to tales of murder, mystery, and mayhem.
Bestselling horror/thriller author Kirsten McKenzie will chair Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel winners Fiona Sussman and Michael Bennett (Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaue), along with debut novelist Gina Butson, and local thriller writer Julie Ryan.
WHEN: Thursday, 7 May 2025
WHERE: St Heliers Library, 32 St Heliers Bay Road
WHEN: 6pm for light refreshments, 6.30pm panel discussion
Free entry.
RSVP: [email protected] or (09) 377 0209
Michael is an award-winning Māori filmmaker and novelist (Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaue) who has won three Ngaio Marsh Awards, across nonfiction and fiction categories: for his true crime work IN DARK PLACES (2017 Best Non-Fiction), detailing the story of Teina Pora, as well as his first two novels starring Māori sleuth Hana Westerman, BETTER THE BLOOD (2023 Best First Novel) and CARVED IN BLOOD (2025 Best Novel). He is co-writer of Irish-NZ television crime drama The Gone, and his crime novels have been translated into several languages, and shortlisted for the Acorn Prize for Fiction and several other awards on four continents.
Gina is a fresh voice in New Zealand storytelling who published her first novel, THE STARS ARE A MILLION GLITTERING WORLDS, last year. She has worked as a lawyer and as an advisor in the public sector. Gina completed her MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2023, and her short fiction has been published in Newsroom, Salient and Turbine/Kapohau. Gina won the Salient Creative Writing competition and was Highly Commended in the Sargeson Prize in 2024, and more recently has been awarded a 2026 residency at the Robert Lord Writers Cottage.
Julie is an Auckland writer and former mayoress of Mt Albert who has published non-fiction works (Beekeeping in Xanadu), poetry collections (Last of the Halcyon Days), and novels. Her globe-trotting action thriller trilogy starring sanitary engineer and keen fisherman Dennis Bogdanovich, who goes overseas to buy a boat and unwittingly gets caught up in a terrorist attack, began with SWIMMING WITH BIG FISH, originally published in 2014, continued with SWIMMING WITH CROCODILES, and has recently been completed with the 2025 release of FATIMA DOWNUNDER.
Fiona is a New Zealand novelist who was born in a book-loving home in Johannesburg, before immigrating to Aotearoa more than thirty years ago. A former family doctor, her stories have won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel (THE LAST TIME WE SPOKE), the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Award, and the 2021 NZ Booklovers Award for Best Adult Fiction (ADDRESSED TO GRETA), been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and included in the pioneering DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology. Fiona's latest novel is crime thriller HOOKED UP.
Kirsten, who will chair the author panel, is a bestselling horror and thriller writer and publishing consultant who fought international crime for 14 years as a Customs Officer, before leaving to work in the family antique store. Now a full time writer, Kirsten lives in Auckland with her family and alternates between writing time travel trilogies and polishing her next thriller. In 2025 her short story "The Watchman", part of the REMAINS TO BE TOLD anthology, was shortlisted for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Her latest novel is THE VAMPIRES OF YORK TOWER.