Originally from a Protestant family from County Meath, Thomas Bracken migrated to Australia and moved to Dunedin in 1869. There he became a journalist, briefly entered Parliament, and established popularity and fame through his poetry, often written under the pseudonym, ‘Paddy Murphy’. His most famous work is the national anthem, ‘God defend New Zealand’.

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Dan Davin grew up in Invercargill’s working-class Irish Catholic community. He was educated at the University of Otago and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. In the Second World War he served with the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force, much of the time in military intelligence. After the war he worked for Oxford University Press. His novels and short stories, many of them featuring Southland or the New Zealand army, have won him an enduring reputation as a fine creative writer.

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Eileen Duggan’s parents were immigrants from County Kerry, and she grew up at Tuamarina near Blenheim. She taught periodically and also wrote a regular column, ‘The Catholic woman’, for the New Zealand Tablet, but her fame was based on her poetry. It began as strongly Irish nationalist in sentiment, but became increasingly focused on New Zealand and religious subjects.

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Pat Hickey was born in Nelson to Irish Catholic parents. He worked in a mine in Utah, where he discovered revolutionary socialism, and then returned to help organise branches of the Socialist Party at Denniston and Blackball. In 1908 he led a famous strike in Blackball which established his role as a major industrial leader of the miners. He became an organiser for the ‘red’ Federation of Labour. After the failure of the 1913 strikes, he left for Australia where, apart from a stint back home between 1920 and 1926, he remained until his death.

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Born to Irish Catholic immigrants, Pat Lawlor attended St Patrick’s College and then spent most of his life as a journalist based in Wellington. He became an enthusiastic supporter of Wellington’s intellectual life, and helped found both the New Zealand centre of PEN (the international writers’ organisation) and the Friends of the Turnbull Library. He wrote over 40 books and booklets.

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Born in Victoria, Australia of Irish parents, Michael Joseph Savage became active in the union movement and followed his friend Paddy Webb to New Zealand in 1907. There he became involved in unions and the Socialist Party, and was elected as a Labour Party MP in 1919. Eventually he led the Labour Party to power in 1935 and became one of New Zealand’s most beloved prime ministers.

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Nelle Scanlan was born in Picton to an Irish Catholic policeman father from County Kerry and a mother from County Cork. She became an itinerant journalist spending much time in Britain, and it was not until she was almost 50 that she published her first book. Then followed a four-part story of the Pencarrow family which established her as New Zealand’s most popular novelist of the time.

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The son of a Presbyterian missionary from County Down, David McKee Wright came to New Zealand in 1887 in hopes of curing a spot on his lung. He worked as a shepherd in Southland and Otago and began writing outback verses. His best-known collection was Station ballads and other verses (1897). He also was a Congregational minister in Ōamaru and Wellington, and eventually moved to Sydney where he worked for the Bulletin.

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