Bernadette Hall is an award-winning poet who lives in North Canterbury. Her many books include The Merino Princess: Selected Poems (2004), and most recently The Lustre Jug (2009), The Judas Tree: Poems by Lorna Stavely Anker (2013) and Life & Customs (2013). In 2004 she visited Antarctica as a guest of Antarctic New Zealand; in 2006 she was Victoria University of Wellington’s Writer in Residence; and in 2007 she held the Rathcoola Residency in County Cork, Ireland. She was instrumental is setting up the Hagley Writers’ Institute in 2008 and tutored there until 2010. She is now the Patron of the Hagley Writers’ Institute and guest editored the first edition of the on-line journal, The Quick Brown Dog.