Donna spent her youth backpacking around the world, writing freelance travel adventures: camel riding the Sahara, hiking Nepal and Tibet, catching bemos, buses, boats and trucks through Asia and Africa on a shoestring. Returning to New Zealand, travel bug unsatiated, she pushed carts up aisles aboard Air NZ, putting layovers in exotic surrounds to good use, by finally studying journalism.

In 2002, her foot hit the accelerator when the chance came to work as a fulltime travel editor for NZ’s favourite car magazine, spending seven years exploring every inch of the country from top to tail.

As her knowledge and passion for the nation’s highways and byways grew, her first book on road trips was commissioned in 2004. For several years after, she juggled book contracts with NZ, Australian, Singaporean, and UK publishers, while continuing working as editor-in-chief on three consecutive magazines, managing creative teams.

Donna now holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing. She still enjoys a good road trip. She’s a longstanding member of the New Zealand Society of Authors, and won a few awards in the distant past: 2013, an Excellence in the Arts Business Award for the Kiwi Critters series, and from 2003-2006, for four consecutive years, she made the finals of the Cathay Pacific Travel Media Awards.

Donna is available for school visits through Read NZ.