[2][3] She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a Graduate Diploma in Teaching,[4] has worked as an advertising copywriter and is now a writer, primary school teacher and creative writing tutor, living in Auckland.
[16] Conrad Cooper’s Last Stand (about a young Pākehā boy and the Bastion Point occupation) won the Esther Glen Medal in the 2015 awards.
[5] Leonie Agnew traces the initial idea for this book back to a tutorial on racial identity with Samoan writer Albert Wendt during her university studies.
[17] In 2015, Leonie Agnew won the Master of the Inkpot Competition run by UK publisher David Fickling Books with her manuscript The Impossible Boy.
[20][21][22] Leonie Agnew won the Storylines Tessa Duder Award in 2022 with her young adult manuscript "The impossible story of Hannah Kemp".