Christina L. Marcham

Born in the UK, Christina wanted to travel as soon as she could to the places she read and dreamt about as a young child. Studying social anthropology and later public health, she travelled to sub-Saharan Africa. Here she lectured in medical anthropology and HIV/AIDS and worked for charities in some of the remotest parts of the world, with some of the most amazing people on earth.

Fortunate to be able to take a break from the heart-breaking realities of the AIDS pandemic, Christina took her training as a SCUBA diving instructor to the Caribbean and Seychelles where she shared the magic of the ocean with newly qualified Merfolk, tagged turtles and conducted shark research. During this time, she wrote three children’s books, two educational story books on HIV/AIDS and bereavement, and a third about a turtle with low self-esteem, which was read on children’s TV in South Africa. She also created and wrote the first 105 episodes of Dsiders, the first mobile phone soap opera in Africa; which ran for five years and is now available on WorldReader.

As well as a passion for travel, Christina loves words and storytelling and has a fascination for Aotearoa’s history, flying boats, kinship and identity. She moved to New Zealand from England in 2014, to give her children the barefoot carefree childhood of 1950s story books. Christina lives in West Auckland with her husband, three children and her black labrador called Bonnie.