[3][4] She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing (2012) from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington.
[5][6] Her books, including her trilogy Butler's Ringlet, Edwin and Matilda and Mother's Day, have a strong sense of landscape and are often set in small towns of Southland and Central Otago in southern New Zealand.
Edwin and Matilda was longlisted for the Dublin Prize in 2008[7] and was also runner-up in the fiction category of the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards[8] and was shortlisted for the 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.
[15] In 2014, she took part in Roadwords,[16] a literary tour of southern South Island towns, with three other writers: Pip Adam, Tina Makereti and Lawrence Patchett, who met each other when they were all studying for PhDs at Victoria University.