Middle grade author Carol Garden is a former journalist, communications manager and secondary English teacher. She is a keen sailor and a voracious reader. In 2018 Carol sailed up to the Pacific Islands with her husband and lived on board their yacht, Dawn Treader, for five months.

Carol Garden’s first novel was published by Scholastic in 2022 after it won the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award for best children’s novel by an unpublished author. Kidnap at Mystery Island went on to win a Storylines Notable Book Award and was a finalist in the 2023 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in the ‘best first book’ category.

The middle grade novel is set in New Zealand, fifty years into the future, when we are living successfully with climate change. It was written to offset the eco-anxiety children are experiencing across the globe. In Kidnap at Mystery Island, the kids of the future have special genetic powers to foil climate criminals, and there is a strong focus on working together to save the planet.

In 2023 Carol was a visiting author on a Storylines tour of the Tasman-Marlborough region, speaking to students from primary and intermediate schools about the future from an environmental perspective. She has visited schools in Auckland and around the Bay of Plenty and enjoys giving young people a chance to discuss climate change and consider how we might deal with it in the future. She also offers writing workshops to keen young writers.

Carol now works as an author, editor and a writing tutor. She is currently working on a crime novel.

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Website: www.carolgarden.co.nz/