Marianne Elliott

After a decade working as a human rights advocate in New Zealand, Afghanistan, the Gaza Strip and Timor-Leste, Marianne returned to New Zealand in 2008 to write down some of the extraordinary stories she had gathered along the way. Today she divides her time between writing, working as a policy advisor and advocate for Oxfam (a not-for-profit international development agency dedicated to finding lasting solutions to poverty and injustice) meditating and teaching yoga. Her current writing project is a memoir about her life and work in Afghanistan. You can read more about her experiences at “Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping,”  www.zenpeacekeeping.typepad.com