"Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer based in Dunedin. The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards and was shortlisted for the 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain writing. In 2015 she worked alongside mountaineer Lydia Bradey to write Going Up Is Easy, a finalist in the Banff Mountain Literature Award. Laurence was awarded an Artists to Antarctica fellowship in 2003 and held the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago in 2007. She has a PhD in creative writing."

"Paul Hersey’s previous jobs have included newspaper reporter, ice climbing instructor, fisheries enforcement officer and outdoors retail store manager. Now based in Dunedin, he spends much of his time either climbing or surfing, or writing on various outdoor themes. Paul’s book Our Mountains (New Holland, 2013) won the adventure travel section award at the 2017 NZ Mountain Film and Book Festival. He also wrote Merino Country (Penguin Random House, 2016), and is a contributor to New Zealand Geographic, Alpinist, The Surfer’s Journal and North & South."