Kyle Mewburn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Zealander
Kyle Mewburn | |
|---|---|
_Kyle_Mewburn.jpg) | |
| Born | 1963 (age 61–62) Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Australian New Zealander |
| Website | |
| kylemewburn | |
Kyle Mewburn (born 1963) is an Australian-New Zealand writer whose books have won many prizes and awards. She lives in Millers Flat, Central Otago, writes picture books and junior fiction and is a popular and well-known speaker at schools and literary festivals.
Kyle Mewburn was born in 1963 in Brisbane, Australia.[1] She completed a Bachelor of Business Degree at the Queensland Institute of Technology, then travelled across Europe and the Middle East and settled in New Zealand in 1990.
After working at a variety of jobs including journalist, EFL teacher, Environment Centre manager, dishwasher, interviewer, traffic surveyor, apple-picker, machine operator and Kibbutznik, Mewburn became a full-time writer in 1997.[1] She has always loved writing and sees writing for children as her "dream job".[2] Her favourite book as a child was The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, which she loved for its word games and puns,[3] qualities which also appear in her own work.[4]
Mewburn was President of the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc) from 2012 to 2016.[5] She visits schools to speak to students about being a writer and to take workshops[1] and has often appeared at literary festivals such as the New Zealand Mountain Film and Book Festival at Wānaka in 2016,[6] the Storylines National Children's Writers and Illustrators' Hui in 2017,[7] the Tamar Valley Writers Festival in Tasmania in 2018[8] and the National Writers Forum in 2018.[5]
After more than 25 years of hiding her true identity, Mewburn told her wife, Marion, she was transgender.[9][10] With Marion's support, Mewburn travelled to Argentina in 2017 to receive facial feminisation surgery.[11][12] In April 2018, she was a panellist in the inaugural Dunedin Pride Festival[13] and in June 2018, she took part in a series of events for Pride Fest, celebrating International Pride Month, organised by Palmerston North City Library.[14] In 2021 her memoir, Faking It: My life in transition, was published by Penguin.[15]
She has spoken out in favour of the move for a New Zealand children's laureate[16] and the recent decision by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to change its definition of transgender from being a mental health disorder.[9]
Mewburn lives with her wife, Marion (a well-known potter), two cats and 24 chickens, in a self-built house with a grass roof[17] in Millers Flat, Central Otago.[18][5]
