About | Our Writers

Helen Steemson is one of the lead writers and reviewers for Words for Breakfast. She is an internationally award-winning writer, gaining accolades for her work in radio, press, online and television. She has worked for Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland, Wellington and New York and JWT in Auckland. She is unhealthily interested in words; if she could read instead of sleep, she would. Katherine Ransom is one of the lead writers and reviewers for Words for Breakfast. She has written over 30 plays, most of them produced. She has 25 years of writing experience under her belt, penning poetry, blogs, essays, media releases, reviews, newsletters, short stories and novels. She holds a Master's degree (1st Class) in Creative and Performing Arts, specialising in screenwriting. She is a perennial committee secretary, currently for the Matamata branch of the National Council of Women (NCWNZ). She is also the national convener of NCWNZ Economics Standing Committee, which involves collating a wide range of opinions, and writing submissions to Parliamentary select committees. When Katherine reads, or writes, she is gone from the neck up. When Rebekah Guy was nine she learned to spell 'Czechoslovakia' and she knew she'd found her passion. She studied linguistics at The University of Auckland, gaining a Post Graduate Diploma in Language Teaching, the scaffolding for a stint in Japan as an English teacher. She enjoyed trying to negotiate in-depth discussions about the minutiae of the English language with speakers who were barely able to put these complex ideas into words. And as a cultural trade-off, she picked up a pidgin variety of spoken and written Japanese. Now back in Auckland, Rebekah works with ESOL speakers for Waitakere City Libraries. She also often spells 'Czechoslovakia' to herself, just because she can. Jemima McKenzie-Higgott has worked as a librarian, an advertising copywriter and a primary school teacher. It is not a coincidence that all these jobs all involve words. She has been a voracious reader for as long as she can remember, and finds people who don’t read deeply suspicious. She loves cryptic crosswords, apostrophes, and fixing spelling mistakes in red pen.  Her writing career began in high-school with a series of poems which have – mercifully – been lost. These days she sticks to copywriting and tries to keep the tortured metaphors to a minimum.