Diane Hebley

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hebley, Diane is a children's writer and author of two major studies of New Zealand children's literature. Born in Hastings, her MA Hons in English and French was awarded by Auckland University in 1959, and she completed her PhD in English at the University of Waikato in 1994. Her doctoral thesis was the first in New Zealand to take children's literature as its subject.

Hebley's titles for children, all illustrated by her husband Gary Hebley, are: A is for Albatross (1981); High on a Hilltop (1984); The Gully that Gabriel Found
(1985); Jock Mackenzie and his Dog (1987); and The Ballad of Young Nick (1987).

As a scholar on the subject of children's literature, Hebley is the author of Off the Shelf:Twenty-one Years of New Zealand Books for Children (1980) and The Power of Place: Landscape in New Zealand's Children's Fiction 1970 - 1989 (1998). In the children's literature journal Magpies, Trevor Agnew writes: 'By her superbly structured analysis of two key decades in the history of New Zealand's children's literature, Diane Hebley has established the benchmark for all future studies, both in scholarship and perception.'

Diane Hebley works as a tutor in Written Communication at the Eastern Institute of Technology, and is the writer and course director of ‘The New Zealand Experience’, part of the Christchurch College of Education's National Diploma of Children's Literature. With her husband Gary she was awarded the New Zealand Children's Literature Association's 1997 Award for Service, now the Betty Gilderdale Award.

MEDIA LINKS AND CLIPS

• Diane Hebley on NZETC
• A Discussion with Diane Hebley on Interviews with NZ Children's Authors