Elena de Roo is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s foremost poets for children, with her work widely published in magazines and websites, and anthologies like A Treasury of NZ poems for Children and Roar, Squeak, Purr: a New Zealand Treasury of Animal Poems. She has also written children’s books that have been published in the UK, Australia and Aotearoa, and she’s been awarded three Storylines Notable Book Awards. In 2010 Elena was awarded the Todd New Writer’s Bursary to write a collection of poems and Wizardry and Wētā Verse is the long-awaited result. Elena is a co-founder of The Poets XYZ, whose mission is to encourage more poetry to be written for children and to set up a network of children’s poets.