22 Plaques at Octagon, Frank Sargeson (No.22)

Frank Sargeson (21 March 1903 – 1 March 1982) was the pen name of Norris Frank Davey. He is considered one of New Zealand’s foremost short story writers. Like Katherine Mansfield, Sargeson helped to put New Zealand literature on the world map.
Born in Hamilton, Sargeson has been credited with introducing New Zealand English into short stories. His technique was to write the story without mentioning the setting. He also used a semi-articulate style which means that the story was written from a naive point of view. Events are simply told but are not explained. (from Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, Brian Turner (No.21)

Brian Lindsay Turner (born 4 March 1944 in Dunedin) is a New Zealand poet and author. He played hockey for New Zealand in the 1960s; senior cricket in Dunedin and Wellington; and was a veteran road cyclist of note. His mountaineering experience includes an ascent of a number of major peaks including Aoraki/Mount Cook. (from Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, Joan de Hamel (No.20)

Joan de Hamel (born 31 March 1924 in London) is a New Zealand children’s writer. She grew up in England and currently lives on the Otago peninsula. She has worked as a teacher, raised a family, and now breeds Angora goats. (from Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, Robin Hyde (No.19)

Robin Hyde (19 January 1906 – 23 August 1939) is one of New Zealand’s major poets. She was born Iris Guiver Wilkinson in Cape Town, South Africa and taken to Wellington, New Zealand before her first birthday. She had her secondary education at Wellington Girls’ College where she wrote poetry and short stories for the school magazine. After school she briefly attended Victoria University of Wellington. When she was 18, Hyde suffered a knee injury which required a hospital operation. Lameness and pain haunted her for the rest of her life. In 1925 she became a journalist for Wellington’s Dominion newspaper, mostly writing for the women’s pages. She continued to support herself through journalism throughout her life. (from Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, Roger Hall (No.18)

Roger Leighton Hall, CNZM, QSO (born 1939), is one of New Zealand’s most successful playwrights, arguably best known for comedies that carry a vein of social criticism and feelings of pathos. (from Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, John A. Lee (No.17)

John Alfred Alexander Lee DCM (31 October 1891 – 13 June 1982) was a New Zealand politician and writer. He is one of the more prominent avowed socialists in New Zealand’s political history. (from Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, John Barr (No.16)

John Barr of Craigilee (24 October 1809 – 18 September 1889) was a Scottish-New Zealand poet. Born in Paisley, Scotland in 1809, Barr moved to Otago in 1852, and farmed a property at Halfway Bush.[1] In 1857 he moved with his wife Mary Jamieson (nee Lamb) and their four children to Balclutha, and established a farm which he called Craigilee. He was the founder of the New Zealand Robert Burns Society. (form Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, A. P. Pickard (No.15)

Pickard (1913-2006), like that other writer born into a railway family, Janet Frame, had a peripatetic childhood and adolescence as his father’s work required frequent shifts. He attended six primary schools and three secondary schools in Dunedin, New Plymouth, Wellington and Invercargill. He finally was able to settle at Southland Boys’ High School in 1928, where he was an outstanding student and athlete: proxime accessit, head prefect, lock-forward and captain of the first XV, champion boxer, and an outstanding cricketer: he went on to represent Southland as an opening medium-fast bowler from 1932 to 1947. (from Itunes)

22 Plaques at Octagon, Denis Glover (No.14)

Lieutenant Commander Denis James Matthews Glover DSC (9 December 1912 – 9 August 1980) was a New Zealand poet and publisher. Well known for radical leftist opinions, he was often in trouble with authorities. In 1935 he founded the Caxton Press, which he used to encourage a less sentimental style of poetry in New Zealand than was being published prior to this time. (from Wikipedia)

22 Plaques at Octagon, Ruth Dallas (No.13)

Ruth Minnie Mumford, CBE (29 September 1919 – 18 March 2008), better known by her pen name Ruth Dallas, was a New Zealand poet and children’s author. Dallas was born in Invercargill, the daughter of Frank and Minnie Mumford. She became blind in one eye at 15, then spent three years at the Southland Technical College and was engaged at 19. (from Wikipedia)