Elena de Roo

Elena de Roo is a children’s writer and poet who lives with her family in Tāmaki Makaurau. Sometimes it feels like there is a door to Narnia in her tiny overgrown garden because the back gate leads straight out onto the slowly rewilding slopes of Maungakiekie and fields of Cornwall Park. There is nothing Elena loves better than to go exploring on the maunga, making up a poem or story as she walks.

In 2010 Elena was awarded the Todd New Writer’s Bursary. Since then her work has been published in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and USA. A number of her books have received Storylines Notable Book Awards and she was the Children’s Writer in Residence at Otago University in 2020.

Elena is a former librarian. Deep down, she has never given up believing in magic worlds and the power of words to take you there.