Barbara Else is a playwright and fiction writer, and has also worked as a literary agent, editor and fiction consultant.

Known for her sharp humour, Else won the Victoria University Writer’s Fellowship in 1999, and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature in 2005. She also received the Creative NZ Scholarship in Letters, which helped her to publish Wild Latitudes in 2007.

As well as publishing four of her own children's novels, Else has edited several collections of writing for children, and was awarded the Margaret Mahy Medal in 2016 in recognition of her services to children's literature.