Sacha Cotter is an award-winning children’s writer based in Wellington, Aotearoa. She is the author of picture books Keys / Ngā Kī, The Marble Maker / Te Kaihanga Māpere, the 2019 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year The Bomb / Te Pohū and most recently Dazzlehands / Ringakōreko – all published by HUIA Publishers, translated by Kawata Teepa, and illustrated by Josh Morgan.
Sacha has also been involved in writing and creating children’s television. She has written for The Kiddets, The Book Hungry Bears and helped create and develop Extreme Cake Sports for HEIHEI TVNZ. Sacha has written for Wild Things magazine and The School Journal. Her children’s poetry has been published in Roar, Squeak, Purr – A New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems, published by Penguin Random House. Sacha grew up in and around Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty. She is Pākehā, of Irish and Lebanese descent.
Award-winning illustrator Josh Morgan (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Pākehā) lives in Wellington with the author Sacha Cotter, their family and a vast hoard of picturebooks. Together with Sacha, they form the storytelling / song-writing / award-winning picture-book-making team, Cotter & Morgan. By day Josh works as a visual designer. By night, he works as a freelance illustrator creating pictures for books, TV, animation, School Journals, maps and magazines. Keys / Ngā Kī, The Marble Maker / Te Kaihanga Māpere, The Bomb / Te Pohū, and Dazzlehands / Ringakōreko are all illustrated by Josh, published by HUIA Publishers, written by Sacha and translated by the very talented Kawata Teepa. Josh grew up in the mighty Manawatū, spending his school days drawing silly things in the back of his exercise books. He still spends way too much time drawing silly things but these days it’s mostly on bills and meeting notes.