Five Questions with Katie Furze

Katie Furze writes children’s non-fiction and fiction including picture books, short stories, articles, plays, readers and novels from her home in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

She has a master’s degree in creative writing and is fascinated by science and nature. Her books include PEKAPEKA, Secret Forest Bat (2025), RURU, Night Hunter (2024) and TUATARA, A Living Treasure (2023) all illustrated by Ned Barraud and published by Scholastic NZ.

You can also read her work in The New Zealand School Journal or in The School Magazine in Australia. Katie has also written stories in anthologies and readers and plays for educational publishers. She loves spending time in nature and you’ll find her outside whenever possible.

What is your writing day like? When and how do you create?

Even if it is just a sentence or two jotted in my journal, I write every day, wherever I am. I like to process my thoughts, ideas and first drafts the old-fashioned way with a pen on paper.

When my children were young, I wrote in short bursts whenever I had the opportunity. This meant most of my early manuscripts were written at swimming lessons, football practices, and dance lessons. Oddly, it seemed the more background noise, the better!

These days I have the luxury of being able to write at home on the dining table, where I can spread out all my notebooks and research papers – this is especially helpful when writing nonfiction. I tend to focus on more creative tasks such as idea generation and first drafts in the morning and analytical tasks like editing, research, and business in the afternoons.

Where do your best ideas come from? How do you develop them further?

I often get asked this at school visits and the answer I give is this: ideas come from everywhere. They are all around you. I find that my ideas don’t usually come fully formed, so I like to make a note of anything I see, hear, or read that I find interesting, either in my journal or my ideas notebook. 

When I’m looking for a new project, I revisit my list of ideas and pick one that feels shiny. For example, back in 2020, I read an article in the newspaper about New Zealand scientists sequencing the tuatara genome – that news article sparked my interest and once I started researching, I found tuatara so fascinating I had to write a book about them.

If I’m working on a nonfiction project the next step is research. Lots of research.

What is the work you are most proud of so far? Why?

I’m extremely proud of my three books so far with Ned Barraud and Scholastic NZ. It is such an amazing feeling to see the words you have written transformed into a beautifully illustrated book that can be read aloud and enjoyed by children. I’m not sure ‘proud’ is the right word – I feel incredibly grateful and happy about the way the books have turned out. 

What is something you dream of achieving with your work?

Fifteen years ago, when I started writing for children, my dream was to have a book traditionally published. It was not an easy journey, but I never gave up and my dream finally came true in 2023 when Scholastic published TUATARA, a Living Treasure. To have RURU, Night Hunter come out in 2024 and then PEKAPEKA, Secret Forest Bat this year has been incredible. In the future, I hope to continue writing the best children’s books that I can.

What is one thing you would say to aspiring children’s writers?

Oh, that’s hard to answer. I guess if I was talking to myself when I started out, I would say, ‘You will achieve your goal, if you don’t give up, but it will take you much longer than you are expecting.’

You can read more about Katie’s work on her website: https://www.katiefurze.com/