Tunmise Adebowale
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Tunmise Adebowale is a Nigerian-born New Zealander studying at the University of Otago. She placed second in the 2024 Robert Burns Poetry Prize (Unpublished Section). She is the winner of the 2023 Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook Student Competition (Year 13) and the 2023 Sargeson Short Story Award (Secondary Schools Division). Her work has been published in Landfall, The Big Idea, Arts Makers Aotearoa, Mayhem Literary Journal, The Spinoff, Tarot, takahē, The Pantograph Punch, Turbine | Kapohau, Newsroom, NZ Poetry Shelf, Verb Wellington, and ReDraft. She writes the Substack whispers of oizys (8k+ subscribers).
Stella Weston
Prose & Essays Editor
Stella Weston (she/her) is a Pākehā writer from Rotorua, studying a BSc in Psychology and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Otago/Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka. Her work has been published in Flash Frontier, Write the World, Toitoi, and a Penguin anthology. She has won the RNZ Short Story Competition, the Michael King Writers’ Centre’s Signals Competition, and the NaNoWriMo Novel Excerpt Competition, among others. Her children’s book on mental health, My Black Dog, was commissioned by the I Am Hope Foundation. She works as the News Editor for Critic Te Ārohi.
Elaine Li
Poetry Editor
Elaine Li is a fifteen-year-old Chinese Kiwi writer whose mother tongue is Mandarin, though she primarily writes in English. Her work draws deeply on Greek and Roman mythology, a subject she is especially passionate about. Outside of writing, she enjoys long walks, losing herself in JSTOR archives, and collecting and restoring vintage books. She plans to study medicine at the University of Otago in the near future. Elaine has been published in ReDraft and Write-On, received an honourable mention in the Heidelberger Autor:innenpreis, and won the Robert Burns Youth Poetry Competition, among other accolades.
Contact
theartlensnz@gmail.com
@theartlensnz
Issue 1
Editor-in-Chief
Tunmise Adebowale
Prose & Essays Editor
Stella Weston
Poetry Editor
Elaine Li
Our first issue is curated. Open submissions will begin with Issue 2.