Virginia Were is a West Auckland-based poet, prose writer, reviewer and arts journalist. Were is a graduate of the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. During the 1980s, she was a member of the band Marie and the Atom. Her first collection of poetry, Juliet Bravo Juliet, was published in 1989, her second, Jump Start, in 1999. She has been the editor of Art News New Zealand and wrote regularly about art, gardening and architecture.
