Barbara Else

Barbara Helen Else (born 1947), previously known as Barbara Neale She lived in Riverton until age two, when her family moved to Wellington. and has worked as a university tutor, an editor and a freelance writer. Her first husband, Jim Neale, was a physician. They had two daughters.

She is a Member of the Academy of NZ Literature and has served on the New Zealand Book Council and on the National Council of the New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc). Barbara Else and her husband, Chris Else, were instrumental in setting up both the New Zealand Association of Literary Agents (NZALA) and the New Zealand Association of Manuscript Assessors (NZAMA)

She was a judge for the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2004

, Else lives in Dunedin, having stayed there after her residency in 2016. She works as a literary agent and manuscript assessor with Chris Else In her 2023 memoir, Laughing at the Dark, Else details her treatment for cancer. Her first novel The Warrior Queen was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her next title, Gingerbread Husbands, was shortlisted for the Booksellers BookData Award. The Travelling Restaurant (the first in her fantasy quartet for children, Tales of Fontania) won the 2012 Junior Fiction Honour Award in the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards, the Esther Glen Medal in the 2012 LIANZA Awards and a White Raven Award and was named as a 2012 IBBY NZ Honour Book for Writing. Go Girl: a storybook of epic NZ Women was shortlisted in the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults Non-fiction Category 2019. Laughing at the Dark, a memoir was shortlisted in the Ockham NZ Book Awards General Non-fiction Category 2024. Else was a visiting writer at Vancouver International Writers' Festival and the Winnipeg International Writers' Festival.

In 2016, Else went to Dunedin as the University of Otago College of Education / Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence, a move that led to her moving permanently to that city. In the same year, she was awarded the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal and Lecture Award. She delivered the Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal Lecture, titled "Making it up as I go along, or Finding the Cornerstones of Creativity", on 3 April 2016. She also delivered the Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture at the WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival in 2018. In 2019 she was presented with the Ignition Festival Award for outstanding contribution to children's literature.

In 2024, Else was named New Zealand Society of Authors President of Honour. In 2025, she received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement ‘recognising outstanding contribution to New Zealand fiction’.