Bernard Steeds

Bernard Steeds is a multiple award-winning writer from New Zealand. His first short story collection, Water, appeared in 2001. In 2025, a revised edition was released under the title Swimming and other stories. Steeds' stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including The Penguin New Zealand Anthology, The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories, Exposition Review, At the Bay, Flash Frontier, Boys' Own Stories, and more.

Steeds is one of only three double-winners of the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition – New Zealand's longest running prize for short fiction. He has also won the At the Bay Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose Competition, been commended for The Moth International Short Story Prize, and been shortlisted or commended for other short fiction prizes, and won several prizes for journalism.

Bernard was born and grew up in a small New Zealand town. He was worked as a political journalist, editor, researcher, policy analyst, and communications contractor and manager, and is a trained teacher of meditation and trauma-informed mindfulness. He has travelled extensively and lived in Catalonia, London, and several New Zealand towns and cities. He currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand.