Paula Boock

Dunedin-born Paula Boock began writing when she was seven.

After graduating from Otago University, she started working as a book editor and publisher, and in 1994 was a founding editor of Dunedin-based Longacre Press. 

Boock's novels are often - though not exclusively - found on the young adults shelves. When writing for film and television, she finds teenage characters "still tend to sneak into my work and take over".

Her first novel was Out Walked Mel, about a teenager who walks out of school to try and escape her life. It won the AIM Best First Book Award, while follow-up Sasscat to Win won the Esther Glen Medal.

Broock's fourth novel Dare Truth or Promise took away the 1998 NZ Post Children's Book of the Year Award, and was published in a number of countries. The book chronicles the chalk and cheese romance that develops between two female high school students.

Boock began writing for the screen in 1995 with an episode (the eleventh) of Cover Story, the acclaimed Gibson Group series set behind the scenes of a current affairs programme.

In 2000 - the year that saw the release of her novel Power and Chaos, based on teen sci-fi show The Tribe - Boock began devoting more energy to scriptwriting. That year she was one of a team of four writers working on the television series The Strip. The show follows a workaholic lawyer who reinvents herself as the owner of a strip club, after her husband leaves her.

"The Strip is a series about a woman entering a man's domain," said Boock. "...she's in a state of flux, opening herself up to change, and starting to take risks. That's quite a common thing for women in their 30s, so we've certainly been able to draw on some personal experiences."

The Strip would win Boock an AFTA best drama script award, for an episode co-written with Kathryn Burnett. 

Boock followed The Strip by joining the creative team behind the highly-acclaimed Insiders Guide to Happiness. Created by Victoria University student Peter Cox, Insiders Guide mixes matters earthly and metaphysical, as eight peoples' lives are united by an accident. In 2005 the show saw Boock nominated for the best script award at the New Zealand Screen Awards. She was beaten out by fellow Happiness writer David Brechin-Smith. Smith's award was one of seven won by the series, including best drama.

The following year Boock was nominated again for an NZ Screen Award - plus a Qantas TV award - for her work on a prequel to the show, this time titled The Insiders Guide to Love.

Boock's other TV work includes a stint as script consultant on series three and four of the award winning bro'Town, and script editing duties on the comedy-drama Burying Brian.

Based on an idea by Maxine Fleming, Burying Brian follows four female friends as they try to create the impression one of their husbands has run off with another woman, after his accidental death. The first drama series to be co-produced by Touchdown chief executive Julie Christie, rights to remake Burying Brian have been sold to at least five countries. 

Boock followed Brian with children's time-travel drama, Time Trackers, which she created with ex-Gibson Group head of development Donna Malane. Time Trackers centres around three teenagers - one from the future, one from the present day, and one from prehistoric times - who travel through time battling a malicious hacker who wants to change history. 

Working under their Lippy Pictures banner, Boock and Malane scripted and produced tele-movie Until Proven Innocent, based on the true story of David Dougherty who was imprisoned for the rape of an 11 year old girl, then later found not guilty of the crime. Nominated for best script, Until Proven would win the Best Drama gong at the 2009 Qantas Film and Television Awards.

Boock and Malane's latest TV project is set to be a dramatisation of the 1953 Tangawai train disaster.