Writer and critic Kiran Dass is Programme Director for WORD Christchurch Festival in New Zealand and has written about books, music and culture for a variety of publications including NZ Herald, NZ Listener, Guardian, The Wire, North & South, Metro, The Spinoff, RNZ, Sunday magazine, Sunday Star-Times and Vice. In 2020 she was awarded a Michael King Writers Centre Residency, and in 2023 was the Verb Wellington Writer in Residence at Katherine Mansfield House & Garden. Dass was a judge for the 2024 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and was the convening judge for the same prize in 2021. She reviews books regularly on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon programme.