Author talk: Being Brave with Barbara Dreaver

For more than three decades, award-winning journalist Barbara Dreaver has reported from across the Pacific, bringing important stories to New Zealand audiences - often at considerable personal risk. From being detained while reporting in Fiji to investigating organised crime and covering the devastating measles outbreak in Samoa, her career has taken her into the heart of some of the region’s most challenging events. In this candid conversation with fellow journalist Tsehai Tiffin, Dreaver reflects on her extraordinary career and her bestselling memoir, Be Brave: The Life of a Pacific Correspondent. She shares insights into the realities of frontline journalism, the people and events that have shaped her work, and the complex forces influencing the Pacific today, including the growing strategic competition between China and the United States. Born in Kiribati and raised partly in Aotearoa New Zealand, Dreaver has spent much of her career championing Pacific stories that might otherwise go unheard. Her reporting has earned widespread recognition, including Reporter of the Year at the 2022 New Zealand Television Awards and appointment as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2024 for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities. Tsehai Tiffin brings her own extensive journalism experience to the discussion. A former TVNZ investigative journalist and foreign correspondent, she worked on programmes including Sunday, Holmes, Close Up and One News, before establishing TVNZ’s Queenstown bureau and moving into communications. An engaging discussion about courage, accountability, the power of journalism and the stories behind the headlines. Supported by Inner Wheel of Queenstown. Part of the Queenstown Writers Festival, running 5–8 November 2026.