Show Ponies

Freya Daly Sadgrove is a writer and performer living in Pōneke. Her first poetry collection, Head Girl, was published in February 2020 with Te Herenga Waka University Press. She directs and produces live poetry event Show Ponies, hailed by Ben Fagan as “a watershed moment for poetry in performance in Wellington".

Chris Tse is the author of three poetry collections published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes, HE'S SO MASC, and Super Model Minority. He and Emma Barnes co-edited Out Here: An anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa. He lives and works in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Rebecca Hawkes is a queer Pākehā poet and painter who grew up on a sheep and beef farm in New Zealand's South Island. With poems widely published in Aotearoa journals, Rebecca’s debut chapbook Softcore Coldsores was published in AUP New Poets 5 for the re-ignition of the series in 2019. Meat Lovers, unleashed by Auckland University Press in 2022, is her first full-length collection. Rebecca is an editor for literary journal Sweet Mammalian and the climate change poetry anthology No Other Place to Stand (forthcoming from Auckland University Press).

essa may ranapiri (Ngāti Wehi Wehi, Ngāti Raukawa, Te Arawa, Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Pukeko, Ngāti Takatāpui, Na Guinnich) is a poet who lives on Ngāti Wairere whenua in Aotearoa. They have a great love for language, LAND BACK and hot chips. Their first book of poetry ransack (VUP) was published in 2019. Echidna is their second book published by the newly renamed Te Herenga Waka University press. They will write until they're dead. (they/ia).

Anahera Gildea (Ngāti Tukorehe) is a poet, essayist, and ‘artivist’. Her work has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, and her first book was published by Seraph Press in 2016. She has worked extensively as a visual artist, performing artist, writer and teacher. Her doctoral research is focused on developing critical literary theory based on Māori intellectual traditions and on nourishing the soil of Māori literature ahakoa te aha.

Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995 and lives in Wellington. In 2017 she completed a Masters in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize. Her first book, Poūkahangatus won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award. Her second collection, Rangikura, is published in 2021 by Victoria University Press.

Ella Quince is a Brisbane-based writer and illustrator best known for her portrait series Use It or Louche It: Proletariat Urban Watercolours and High-Contrast Masculinities, for which she was awarded the 2018 Skewiff Prize. 

A familiar sight around the McWhirters Building and the Queen Street Mall, her ubiquitous presence has led some to characterise her as a ghost. In 2020 she will publish her memoir with Unapologetic Press, SinVisible: Performing Perversion in Public for Profit, which was described by the judges of the Dongle Award for an Unpunished Manuscript as ‘Impactful’ and ‘Finished’. She identifies as sophisticated. 

For marketing and promotional purposes Ms Quince keeps a boy by the name of Myles McGuire.