Linda (L.P.) Hansen

Hansen, Linda (1944 - ) moved to Wellington as a teenager to take up a writing position in Radio New Zealand. From 1971-74 she worked in the Parliamentary Services Commission Research Unit, becoming Deputy Director, and returned in 1988-1992. As a writer, she developed material for Volunteer Service Abroad, BNZ, ERO, Wellington High School CEC and others until 1997. Hansen completed her Masters in Communications at Victoria University and her Diploma in Adult Literacy at WELTEC. For fifteen years she taught writing and communications at universities and polytechnics in the Wellington region.

Hidden Stories of Heroism for a Peaceful Planet (2025), her seventh book brings together for the first time the Moriori covenant of peace; Parihaka’s nonviolent resistance; New Zealanders’ outrage at boys forced into militarism; Kiwi peacemakers on the battlefield; Samoans inspired by Parihaka, and many more challenges to violence – up to the present day. Endorsed by academics, historians and teachers, it is a nonfiction text for older readers with appropriate cultural approvals gained in all relevant areas.

The Argonaut Queen, Hansen’s advanced picture book put out by StarfishBay Publishing, Australia (2025) introduces the pink-spotted octopus, creator of the fragile paper nautilus shell, along with Jeanne Villepreux-Power, inventor of the aquarium and the woman scientist who first studied these engaging creatures.

The Dark Quest of Countess X – A Call to the World’s Youth (2021) was launched with a writing competition that attracted entries from schools all over the country. In the book, teenagers from around the world embark on a mysterious Quest to help redress a major human rights abuse – and are themselves transformed.

In The Fire Keeper’s Girls (2018), two rebel teenage girls, motivated by a mysterious network of real-life women, outwit their oppressors and move closer to their life goals. Brief biographies of celebrated women from 25 countries appear at the end of the novel.

Bad Oil and the Animals (2016) follows a multicultural group of teenagers as they confront deforestation, in particular the loss of orangutan habitat, and New Zealand’s unwitting involvement in this catastrophe.

In An Unexpected Hero (2014) young Matt Turner, bullied because of his stammer, is helped to claim his innate courage through a growing understanding of NZ’s First World War pacifist Archie Baxter. An Unexpected Hero was the text chosen by teachers for Years 7-8 in NZ readaloud in both 2017 and 2019.

From 2009 to 2014, Hansen wrote for Global Focus Aotearoa’s magazine ‘Just Change: Critical Thinking on Global Issues’ and ‘The Vessel’, a magazine focusing on critical research into social and cultural issues. Between 2015 and 2017, she wrote for the Australian children’s journal ‘Historicool’.

Hansen published Food Legends of the World (2009) with illustrator Bodhi Vincent. She was a prize winner in a Whitireia Open Poetry Competition, runner up in a takahē magazine’s Cultural Studies Essay Competition and in 2012, won the Jack Lasenby Senior Award for Children’s Writing for Socks, her story on homelessness.