Our Judges

Greg O'Connell

Bill Nagelkerke

We were very privileged to have authors Greg O'Connell and Bill Nagelkerke judge our Russley Writers' Walk Competition for 2016.

Greg O’Connell is the creator of the Lines Out Loud family poetry show. He has fifteen poems in the School Journal, and five poems in the Random House anthology A Treasury of New Zealand Poetry for Children. His new book Megabyte & Other Poems will appear in 2017.

Bill Nagelkerke is a children’s writer and former librarian. His stories, poems and plays have appeared in many New Zealand anthologies, school journals and readers, national radio and television, including Playschool. Bill has written 7 novels for older children, and translated several books from Dutch into English.

Bill has been convenor of the NZ Post Book Awards judging panel, a member of the international jury for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards, and in 2013 he was awarded the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal and Lecture Award.

Greg was the judge for our junior entries (years 0-4), and Bill selected our senior entries (years 5-8, and staff).

Unfortunately Greg was not able to be at the opening, so Bill presented all the panels to the winning writers. The panels are currently being installed on fences around our school and neighbourhood, so keep a lookout for them!