Diana Noonan
New Zealand children's author
Diana Noonan (born 7 January 1960) is a New Zealand children's author. In 2022 she was awarded the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal for her outstanding contributions to New Zealand literature for young people.
Biography
Noonan was born in Dunedin and attended Waihola Primary School and Tokomairiro High School. She completed a degree in English at the University of Otago in 1980. She completed a teaching diploma the following year and began her career as a teacher. She taught in secondary schools for four years then became a full-time writer. Noonan was Writer in Residence at the Dunedin College of Education in 1993, and was the editor of the New Zealand School Journal for eight years.
Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake Noonan wrote a children's picture book, Quaky Cat, about a cat's experience of the earthquakes. She donated all royalties to the Christchurch earthquake appeal, raising over $150,000. She and the book's illustrator Gavin Bishop received the North West Christchurch Award 2012 in appreciation of her donation.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Diana Noonan” is new Zealand children's author. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Diana, Noonan and Zealand, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “new Zealand children's author” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110961108. VIAF identifies the subject as 5511149296162280670000. The Library of Congress control number is n92088289. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2022, 1980 and 1993.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Diana Noonan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.