Dr Gina Cole, MNZM, of Auckland, for services to literature
Dr Gina Cole is a lawyer and award-winning author. Her short story collection ‘Black Ice Matter’ was published in 2016. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, magazines and journals. She was a keynote speaker at the 2017 Auckland Writers Festival and the Samesame but Different LGBTQIA+ Writing Festival. She was the inaugural Pasifika curator at the Auckland Writers Festival in 2021. She is an Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa and has attended residencies at the Iowa Writers Program, the Island Institute in Alaska, Michael King Writers Centre and Varuna Writers House. Dr Cole published ‘Na Viro’, a Pasifikafuturist science fiction novel, in 2022.