Rebecca Macfie has been a journalist for 37 years, including 11 years as a senior writer for the New Zealand Listener. In 2024 she was the JD Stout Research Fellow at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University–Te Herenga Waka, where she worked on her latest book, Hardship and Hope: Stories of Resistance in the Fight Against Poverty in Aotearoa (Bridget Williams Books 2025). Along with Graeme Whimp and Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich she is co-editor of Pakukore: Poverty by Design (Bridget Williams Books 2025), a collection of 13 essays on the systems that create and maintain poverty in Aotearoa. She is the author of Tragedy at Pike River Mine: How and why 29 men died (Awa Press 2013), and Helen Kelly: Her Life (Awa Press 2021). She lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.