Chapman is a former athlete, competing as a member of the Samoa women's national cricket team and as a New Zealand domestic champion javelin thrower.

[6][7] Chapman received a scholarship to attend Samuel Marsden Collegiate School in Wellington, where she competed in basketball, athletics and cricket events.

[25] In the same year, Chapman was asked to ghostwrite New Zealand professional basketball player Steven Adams' autobiography, which was published in 2018.

[29] Some of Chapman's best-known works include pieces on housing unaffordability,[30] sleep inertia aiding lamps,[31] and ranking lists of snack foods such as biscuits and lollies.

[25] During the same year, Chapman released A New Kind of Leader, a biography of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern she was commissioned to write in 2019.

[34][35] When print magazine North & South was relaunched in late 2020, Chapman became the publication's senior editor.