Barbara Else is the author of 12 novels (including six for children), best known for The Warrior Queen which was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her fantasy quartet for children Tales of Fontania includes The Travelling Restaurant which won several awards including the Esther Glen Medal. She has also edited several anthologies of stories for children. Her historical novel Wild Latitudes, published in NZ in 2007 has been republished as an e-book by Odyssey Press.
She has had work performed on stage and radio and won the 1990 Timaru Herald-Aoraki Festival Playwriting Award for Crazy Paving. Good Dream Bad was read at the 1988 Playwrights´ Workshop. In 1999 Barbara was Writer in Residence at Victoria University, and in 2005 was awarded a Scholarship in Letters. She has an MNZM for Services to Literature. She has also held the University of Otago/Creative NZ Children’s Writing Fellowship and in 2016 was Awarded the Margaret Mahy Medal for services to children’s literature. She lives in Dunedin and, with her husband writer Chris Else, runs an advisory service for writers.