Meet
Joanne Welch
Joanne has been writing children's stories ever since she began reading to her own little ones. Writing is her passion—something she can't help but do. Driven by a deep desire to help children make sense of their world and themselves, Joanne crafts stories that inspire, entertain, and educate young minds.
Meet
Sarah Pou
Sarah Pou is a full time artist who works from her studio on the beautiful Kapiti Coast, New Zealand. Her artworks are sold in Galleries throughout New Zealand and also held by overseas collectors.
"Working as a full time artist my illustrative style naturally started to merge into my artworks and vice versa. My style is bold, colourful uplifting and thoughtful.All of my illustrations are created by hand, using quality materials. I love the texture, subtlety and vibrancy I can get using simple graphite, watercolours and ink."
Meet
Susan Wildblood
Susan Wildblood is an artist and illustrator. She loves the challenges that come along with creating the fun characters and engaging storyboards that help bring children’s storybooks to life, often using real people, places and animals for her inspiration.
“I came to the conclusion long ago that creativity, for me, is not a choice it is who I am."
Meet
Christine Ford
Kushti divvus. Hello” in Angloromani, the language of my Romanichal ancestors—Romany people who migrated from India centuries ago, and by the 1500s found themselves in Great Britain.My family is from the Scottish borders, where we were referred to as border gypies by the Gadjo (non-Romany people). Today my family are blow ins to Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand. My father taught me a bit of the Romanes language as well as Romany stories from his life and my wider family. I have painted many of those stories and ideas through the years. When not painting I am usually working as a social worker.
Meet
Sarita Petric
Surrounded by classical music from an early age, she followed in her family’s footsteps and studied classical music from the age of 7 till 18. Piano was her main instrument, but she always felt creative and expanded her knowledge onto different instruments. She fell in love with bass guitar at the age of 12 and that has been her passion ever since. Through the last 25 odd years she has played in quite a few different bands, composed, and arranged music and has been involved in professional studio recording.
Leaving Slovenia in 2014 and moving to New Zealand has been a big life change and in 2020 she got back into music after joining the Bowater Band in 2022 (Kapiti Coast). Surrounded by creative people and energy became the perfect environment to do something new and different.
Meeting Joanne was that moment in time, when things aligned, and Sarita was pulled into the world of imagination and playfulness of children’s books. Being able to use her creativity to compose quirky music, fun hooks and mix different genres of music and introduce them to the younger generations through story telling is very inspiring for her.