Helen Rickerby lives in a cliff-top tower in Aro Valley, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She has published five and a half collections of poetry, including How to Live (Auckland University Press, 2019), which won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Rickerby single-handedly ran Seraph Press, a boutique but significant publisher of New Zealand poetry, and was co-managing editor of literary journal JAAM from 2005 to 2015. She earns a crust as an editor and technical writer.