Talk:List of New Zealand writers

Peter Wells

The entry for Peter Wells links to the dead Australian guitarist from Rose Tattoo, not the New Zealand novelist/film reviewer/film maker/gay activist of the same name. Indeed, there doesn't appear to be an entry for Wells the writer at all, not even a stub.

Can someone with more Wiki-expertise than me do something to at least disconnect the guitarist from the entry in this article? And perhaps set up a stub page for Wells the writer, and maybe a disambiguation page as well.

If I wasn't so ignorant I'd do it myself.

118.92.8.56 (talk) 12:24, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I've changed the link to go to Peter Wells (New Zealand), but there is no article as yet.-gadfium 18:39, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

What's this about?

Is this a list of any NZ writer who has ever commercially published literature, or what is this page about?Adabow (talk) 09:38, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Implicitly, writers on this list should be notable, and of course they need to have a strong connection to New Zealand. They do not need to have a Wikipedia article, otherwise the list might be a duplicate of Category:New Zealand writers. There is the potential for someone to improve the list by adding more information for each writer (eg type of writing, date of birth and death) and converting it to a table format.-gadfium 22:16, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Explanation of changes

I've gone through and added dates of birth/death and a brief description of each writer, as well as columns for ease of reading.

Although "New Zealand writers" seems very broad, the article opens with "Writers who have contributed to New Zealand literature include:". I've therefore taken the liberty of removing people who didn't seem to me to fit this description -- either because they're not "New Zealand" writers, or because their writing isn't in the nature of literature. I should say that (with the possible exception of the final bullet point) all these people certainly seem to be notable in their own fields, and I'm not suggesting their pages have any issues, just that at the moment they don't seem to me to be writers who have contributed to New Zealand literature.

I've removed:

• Annette Baier was a philosopher and Hume scholar, and her writing seems to be purely academic. She also wrote most (all?) of her work while at the University of Pittsburgh, so query whether it would count as NZ anyway.
• Mihingarangi Forbes is a notable journalist, but I can't see how her work relates to NZ literature (although she's certainly a writer).
• Margot Forde was a botanist, curator, and taxonomist. She appears to have only written academic articles.
• Lucy Hockings is a BBC reporter - can't see she meets either the New Zealand or writing elements.
• Liddy Holloway has written some television scripts, but that seems to be all.
• Philippa Howden-Chapman is a professor of public health and appears to have only written academic articles.
• Rosalind Hursthouse is a philosopher whose works seem to be in the nature of academic writing.
• Prue Hyman is an economist, again whose works seem to be in the nature of academic writing.
• Florence James was born in New Zealand, but moved with her family to Australia when she was young and her entire career has been Australian.
• Angela Kepler was born in New Zealand, but most of her work has been outside NZ, and in any case is academic writing.
• Suzi Kerr is an economist who has published articles in journals.
• Gill Matthewson has published academic writing about architecture.
• Miriam Meyerhoff is a sociolinguist, again academic writing.
• Antonija Mitrović is a computer scientist, again academic writing.
• Bruce Purchase was an actor and I can't see from his article that he ever actually wrote anything.
• Amber Reeves was born in New Zealand, but moved to the UK when she was young and spent the rest of her life there.
• Kristina Webb is a social media influencer and has published two colouring books.

P.S. I'm conscious that almost all of them are women. I think that's a reflection of the gender make-up of the list, though. As said above, I'm absolutely not seeking to comment on notability -- just whether people fit the inclusion criteria for this particular list. Happy to be disagreed with. Chocmilk03 (talk) 18:37, 24 November 2020 (UTC)