Zoë Meager is from Aotearoa New Zealand and has a Master of Creative Writing from the University of Auckland.

She won the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific Region) with her story Things with faces, and the Bristol Short Story Prize 2025 with Things with bodies, which judges called ‘clear, careful, nothing-wasted prose,’ infused with ‘deep love’ and ‘unthinkable yet inevitable grief.’ Judge Kate Johnson likened its impact to Shirley Jackson, applauding its bold, precise storytelling and exploration of motherhood, sacrifice, and sorrow.

She is twice runner-up in the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize (2022, 2025), and her work has also been recognised in the Overland Story Wine Prize, the Overland Victoria University Short Story Prize, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the North & South Short, Short Story Competition, the Sargeson Prize, the Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition, and the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition.

Her work has been published abroad, including in Cheap Pop, Granta, Gigantic Sequins, Janus Literary, Litro, Lost Balloon, Mascara Literary Review, Maudlin House, Meniscus, MoonParkReview, Overland, Splonk, The New Guard, The Offing, and Word-o-Mat, and anthologised in two Bath Flash Fiction anthologies, among others. 

Locally, her work has appeared in journals including Headland, Hue and Cry, Landfall, Mayhem, Oscen, Sponge, and Turbine | Kapohau, and been anthologised in Bonsai: Best small stories from Aotearoa New Zealand and two volumes of Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy. She was awarded the 2024 Sargeson Fellowship.

Zoë is the Fiction Editor and Comics Co-editor at takahē, and a mentor at The Creative Hub.