Dr Atakohu Middleton (Waikato, Pākehā) has been a news and features journalist for 30 years, mostly in print. She has worked for outlets such as the Sunday Star-Times, New Zealand Herald, New Zealand Listener, Mana magazine and the Guardian (UK) in English, and more recently as a news journalist in te reo Māori for Te Reo Irirangi o Waatea.
In 2020, Atakohu completed her doctoral thesis on Māori journalism, which was rewritten for a general audience and published in January 2024 as Kia Hiwa Rā! Māori Journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand (Huia).
Since 2017, Atakohu has been writing short stories in te reo for adult learners, which have been published in the recent anthologies Huia Short Stories 12, 14 and 15, and Hiwa: Contemporary Māori Short Stories (AUP).