Wendy Parkins is a Dunedin writer of fiction and non-fiction. Born in Sydney, she first moved to Dunedin in 2005. After eight years in the English Department at the University of Otago, she took up a position as Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Kent, UK, before returning to New Zealand in 2018 to escape Brexit and pursue creative writing.

Her memoir, Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive, was published by the University of Otago Press in 2019, and she appeared at the Dunedin Writers’ and Readers’ Festival that year.

Wendy’s first novel, The Defiance of Frances Dickinson, was published in 2024 and is based on a true story about an English heiress who faced the scandal of divorce in the 1840s. Her next novel project will be set in 1850s Dunedin and will continue the story of a character taken from Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son.