Diana Wichtel Photo: supplied
Diana Wichtel is an award-winning journalist. After gaining an MA at the University of Auckland, she tutored English before moving into journalism, and is perhaps best known for her long-standing media commentary for the New Zealand Listener. She has also written dialogue for television and was the recipient of the 2016 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship. Wichtel used her time on the fellowship to write her life story, and specifically that of her father, a Polish Jew who miraculously survived the Holocaust, but who disappeared from her life when she moved with her mother and siblings from Vancouver to New Zealand. The story - which sees her visiting Warsaw to find out what happened to him - has just been published as Driving to Treblinka.