Jessica Le Bas’s first collection of poetry, incognito (AUP 2007), won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award. Her second collection, dealing with adolescent depression, Walking to Africa (AUP 2009), was a finalist in the Ashton Wylie Book Awards. She worked for the UN during the Balkan War, and later in the Beehive. In 2012 Le Bas went to Rarotonga for a year, returning again in 2017. Her current job takes her into the Pa Enua, the outer islands of the Cook Islands: Pukapuka to Mangaia, Aitutaki to Mauke. Large Ocean Islands is a growing sequence of poems arising from living in the cultural wealth and wisdom of the extraordinary people of the Cook Islands. She lives in Nikao, Rarotonga.