Lynley Hood

Profile
Lynley Hood is a first-rate biographer, historian and social commentator whose work has been described as courageous, comprehensive, provocative and insightful. In 2003 she was awarded a LittD (examined, not honorary) from the University of Otago for “published contributions of special excellence in linguistic, social, literary and historical knowledge”.

Selected published works
Sylvia! The Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner, 1988, Wattie Book of the Year 1989; Who is Sylvia? The Diary of a Biography, 1990; Minnie Dean: Her Life and Crimes, 1994; A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case, 2001, Montana Medal for Non-fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards 2002.

Publishers
Longacre Press www.randomhouse.co.nz (Longacre distributor)

Biography
Lynley Hood was born in Hamilton in 1942 and moved to Dunedin in 1961 where she completed a Master of Science in Physiology. She worked in medical research until the birth of her first child. In 1979 she became a freelance writer.

Hood’s first book, Sylvia! The Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner (Penguin Books) won the 1989 Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Award and the 1989 PEN Best First Book of Prose Award and was Talking Book of the Year in 1990. In Metro, Michael King wrote: “Like all first-rate biographies, Sylvia! tells us a great deal more than Ashton-Warner – about the business of life itself, its promises, its anxieties, its ultimate disappointment. I cannot recommend it too highly.”

In 2001 Hood published A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case, which re-examined a celebrated New Zealand criminal case and cast considerable doubt on the conviction of a supposed child molestor. The book won the History Award, the Readers’ Choice Award and the Montana Medal for Non-fiction at the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and the 2002 Skeptics New Zealand Bravo Award.

In the New Zealand Law Journal Ian Freckelton writes: “A City Possessed is a gripping and controversial analysis of a legal and social phenomenon that has the potential to confront us all … Hood’s courage in robustly presenting her version of the tale and in seeking to learn from it should inspire all of us to reflect soberly and thoughtfully about how child protection, criminal investigation and legal procedures can be improved.”

Hood’s articles have appeared in publications including New Zealand Books, the Otago Daily Times, the New Zealand Listener, the New Zealand Author. She contributed a chapter to Alison Jones’ Touchy Subject: Teachers Touching Children (2001), and the introduction to Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s Stories from the River (1986). In 1991 Hood was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago.