Maggie Rainey-Smith is a novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist and book reviewer.
[1] Her father, Reginald Mervyn Rainey, had served with the 2nd NZ Expeditionary Force in World War II and was taken prisoner in Crete and held in Stalag VIIB in Poland.
[2] She grew up in Richmond and later travelled widely overseas, including to the United States, England, Scotland and Norway,[3] afterwards returning to New Zealand and setting up a recruitment consultancy business.
She volunteered for eight years to run a creative writing course in the library of a local women's prison[10][11] and presented a paper on this experience ("Reading short stories in prison") at the Dan Davin Short Story Conference in Invercargill in September 2017.
[12][13] She teaches ESOL Workplace English to migrants and refugees,[3] and spent three months in Siem Reap in 2013 as a volunteer teacher.