ABOUT RACHAEL

Kia ora! Here’s where you’ll find information about me, whether you’re a young reader discovering my work for the first time or looking for more background on my work.

I’m a writer, book reviewer and former literary festival director from Aotearoa New Zealand. I love music and started playing bass guitar in rock bands when I was 15, but these days I spend more time listening than playing. When I was young, I tried to ride every horse I met and could often be found galloping bareback along a beach with the wind in my hair. I was a passionate reader, and my books of choice were usually fantasy like CS Lewis’s Narnia books or Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, or endless pony stories like Patricia Leitch’s Jinny books or The Black Stallion by Walter Farley.

I have also published two novels for adult readers, The Sound of Butterflies and Magpie Hall.

The Grimmelings is my second book for children; the first, Red Rocks (reissued as Secrets at Red Rocks), won the Esther Glen Medal in 2013 and I’m excited to say is now a television series, available to watch on Neon and Sky Go in New Zealand, and on BYUtv in the US.

Both these novels reflect my love for, and obsession with, Scottish folklore – the weirder the better. I also have a junior fiction series called Violet and the Velvets, drawing on my experience playing in bands as a teen. The first two books were published in 2025, with the second two due in 2026.

MORE BACKGROUND

Rachael King is a writer, reviewer, former literary festival director and ex-bass player from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of four novels for children: Red Rocks (now reissued as Secrets at Red Rocks) (Penguin Random House), which won the Esther Glen Medal in 2013, The Grimmelings, which was published in 2024 with Allen and Unwin (NZ and Australia) and Guppy Books (UK), and will be published in 2025 in North America. Red Rocks is now a television series called Secrets at Red Rocks (available to watch on Neon and Sky Go in New Zealand, and BYUtv in the US).

Rachael has a BA from Auckland University and gained a Masters in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in 2001. Her first novel for adults, The Sound of Butterflies, was published by in New Zealand by Random House, in the US by William Morrow, and in the UK by Picador; it was also translated into eight languages and won the award for best first novel at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her second novel, Magpie Hall, was published in 2009 and was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Over the years, Rachael has played bass guitar in six bands, worked in bookshops, radio, television and magazines, and was the programme director of the WORD Christchurch Festival for eight years until the end of 2021. The festival hosts hundreds of writers from around New Zealand and the world.

Rachael received a Waitangi Day Honour Award in 2020 from the New Zealand Society of Authors (formerly PEN) for her work at WORD bringing exiled Kurdish writer Behrouz Boochani to New Zealand. In 2023 she was named Best Reviewer at the Voyager New Zealand Media Awards. She lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

The Grimmelings won both the 2025 NZ Booklover’s Award for Junior Fiction, and the Bookselllers New Zealand Children’s Choice Award, as well as a Storylines notable Book Award. In March 2025 she published the first in the Violet and the Velvets series, about a primary school girls’ rock band that solves mysteries, with the second published in August. Two more are due in 2026.

OTHER
WRITING

I write book reviews and essays, mostly about books, and mostly about children’s books. I have a regular series in The Spinoff looking at old children’s books that are worth revisiting as an adult, and my Newsroom reviews won Best Reviewer at the 2023 Voyager New Zealand Media Awards. You can find my work in the ‘Other Writing’ section of this site, and there is a selection of current and past work in the links below.

The Press   /   Newsroom   /   The Spinoff   /   The Sapling   /  ANZ Review of Books

For rights enquiries, please email info@sheilland.co.uk

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