Aroha Awarau

Aroha Edward Awarau (born 21 January Hawera, New Zealand) ) is an award winning journalist who won the 2008 New Zealand Magazine Journalist of the Year (Mass Market) at the annual Magazine Publisher’s Association Award. He is currently working as a journalist at one of New Zealand’s most iconic and cherished magazines, New Zealand Woman’s Weekly.

Awarau has a degree in Film and Television from the University of Waikato and a Journalism degree from the Auckland University of Technology. After leaving Waikato university in 1998, Awarau worked in the New Zealand film industry for two years, working on films such as What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? and The Price of Milk.

Awarau also had a short stint as a stand up comedian, becoming a finalist in the Raw Quest, a national competition to find the best new comedian and appeared as a contestant in the reality show, So You Think You’re Funny? , a competition to find New Zealand’s funniest new comedian.

While still at high school Awarau was the first and so far the only writer to become a three time winner of the Ronald Hugh Morrieson Literary Award. The annual award was created by the South Taranaki District Council to commemorate Hawera’s most famous author, Ronald Hugh Morrieson.

References

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1286595/

http://www.mpa.org.nz/Shared/Documents/Content/2008AwardWinners.pdf