Gareth Ward

Ward, Gareth grew up in the town of Banbury in the UK, where he studied and received his joint honours in Biology and Computer Science at the University of York. Gareth is an author and the owner of two independent bookshops, Wardini Books and Wardini Books Napier. He also goes by The Great Wardini. He wrote and hosted the steampunk murder mystery weekend in Napier.

Gareth’s first novel, The Traitor and the Thief, won the Storylines Tessa Duder award in 2016 and was published through Walker Books Australia. The Traitor and the Thief is a young adult steampunk novel, NZ Herald’s review said, “There are shades of Oliver Twist, James Bond and Harry Potter in there, all seamlessly combined to make for an adrenalin-filled escapade.” The Traitor and the Thief made New Zealand Listener’s Top 50 Book list in 2017, won the 2018 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Youth Novel, received a 2018 Storylines Notable Book Award and was a finalist in two categories at 2018 The New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

And if The Traitor and the Thief leaves readers craving more, they can find salvation in Gareth’s follow up novel in the series, The Clockill and the Thief. To celebrate its release, Gareth held The Clockill’s Ball at the Havelock North Function Centre on the 27th of July 2019, a steampunk themed ball to mirror the world of The Traitor and the Thief series. The event offered the chance for children under 17 dressed in Steampunk outfits to potentially have a character named after them in a future novel.

In his interview with NZ Booklovers Gareth said of The Clockill and the Thief, “I love the characters in this book, they are my friends. It was such a pleasure to go on another adventure with them. They have taken on a life of their own and constantly surprise me.”

In September 2023, in an interview on Nine to Noon on RNZ, Gareth spoke about his latest fantasy book, Tarquin the Honest: Ocian's Elven, which is a sequel to Hand of Glodd that tells us of the adventures of the main character, who's a charlatan wizard and, Lunar Nix, a fiesty gnome, his sidekick.