About Robyn Welsh | Writer & Author
Looking back, I’m sure I was born to the business of putting pen to paper. At primary school in Westport where I grew up, I wrote a story entitled “I am a cricket ball”. Apparently it was clever enough for my teacher to commend my efforts to my mother.
I have no idea what became of that original paper copy but I do know that I went on to write – a lot! I remember filling the wide lines of my school exercise book, my little right hand wrapped around my Black Beauty pencil that was standard issue back in the 1960s.
Beyond my secondary school years at Tawa College, my life continued to be about putting pen to paper, as I signed up for the 1974 Wellington Polytechnic’s news journalism course.
Two years later I was off to the Taranaki Herald in New Plymouth where I penned stories on matters great and small, before doing more of the same on the Evening Post newspaper in Wellington.
Two years there as a general news reporter and Civic reporter set me up for a year’s worth of breaking news and parliamentary sittings as one of the Press Gallery reporting team in 1979.
The following year I joined the NZ Woman’s Weekly as its sole-charge Wellington branch writer before heading up to Auckland to take up sub-editing duties. Then it was back to feature writing which set me up perfectly for freelancing when my three children were young.
Since then I’ve written news stories, features and PR copy. My magazine work has included the home and design titles - Home, Your Home & Garden, NZ House & Garden and 25 Beautiful Homes magazine in the UK.
I was one of the foundation writers for the NZ Herald’s tabloid “Herald Homes” when it launched in 1999 and I am still on the writing team. I was a founding writer on the “Where to Live in Auckland” real estate guides that ran for several years.
In 2004 I wrote the editorial copy for the New Zealand Retirement Guide and I continued that role when the publication was taken over by Yellow as the “Yellow Guide to Retirement Living” in 2009/2010. My first role with Yellow preceded that when I wrote the editorial for the 2008 edition of the “Yellow Front Door’.
These days I’ve woven creative writing into my writing life, including short stories and stories for children of all ages.
I have co-authored “Wired for Sound – The Stebbing History of New Zealand Music” which is to be published in November 2019.
Of a working day with pen and paper close by, I never tire of the business of crafting stories – both fact and fiction - for the telling. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.