Lorraine Orman

Lorraine Orman is a writer, librarian, writing tutor, competition judge and reviewer. She has written books for children and young adults and a number of her short stories have been anthologised. Her novel Cross Tides won the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards Best First Book Award in 2005. She lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Lorraine Orman was born on 24 November 1948 in Auckland. She studied for a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Auckland, followed by a post-graduate diploma of librarianship in Wellington. Her library career included jobs at the National Library and school and tertiary institution libraries.

With a young family, she began to write short stories for children, the first of which was published in the New Zealand School Journal in 1982. Since then, her stories have been included in anthologies and broadcast on National Radio.

She was involved with the Storylines Foundation for many years. With Tessa Duder, and on behalf of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) and the Storylines Foundation, she edited an anthology of short stories to celebrate International Children’s Book Day in 2007.

She was a judge for the New Zealand Post Children's and Young Adults' Book Awards in 2004 and has also acted as a judge for the LIANZA Awards, the Tessa Duder Award and the Tom Fitzgibbon Award.

She reviewed children’s books for writing blogs and Magpies magazine and ran many courses and workshops on writing for children.

After living for many years in Warkworth, Lorraine Orman moved to Christchurch with her husband in 2018 to be closer to family. She has five grandchildren.

Lorraine Orman won the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards Best First Book Award 2005 for Cross Tides. Several of her other books have been named as Storylines Notable Books.