Tessa is our club’s patron.

Tessa Duder trained as a journalist and has published nearly fifty works of fiction and non-fiction for both children and adults, plays and anthologies. Her best-known work, Alex (1987), was adapted for a 1993 movie. Recent publications include portraits of Margaret Mahy, Sir Peter Blake, Auckland’s ‘First Lady’ Sarah Mathew, and Captain James Cook. Her four Alex books have recently been reissued as Alex – The Quartet.

Her awards include a number of children’s fiction prizes, the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal (1996), the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship (2003), an Artists to Antarctica award (2007), the OBE (1994) and CNZM (2020), the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction (2021), and an honorary doctorate from the University of Waikato (2008). She’s a Trustee of the Storylines Children’s Literature Trust Te Whare Waituhi Tamariki, and Vice-patron of the Spirit of Adventure Trust. She has four daughters and two grandchildren and lives in Auckland. Work-in-progress includes a sequel to her 2023 historical novel The Sparrow.