Briar Wood grew up in Mangere in Auckland, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, New Literatures, Cultural and Critical Theory at London Metropolitan University. She is a graduate of the University of Auckland and has a DPhil from the University of Sussex. She has worked as a journalist and editor. Her poetry and critical writing has been widely published. In 2001 she wrote poems for the “Glorified Scales” installation by Maureen Lander at Te Papa Whakahiku/The Auckland War Memorial Museum, which referred to their Ngā Puhi whakapapa.