Desmond, Pip

Pip Desmond is a freelance writer and journalist who has spent most of her working life in the community sector, both paid and unpaid. In 2000, she became Labour Minister Ruth Dyson’s press secretary before doing the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University in 2006, where she wrote the first draft of ‘Trust: A True Story of Women and Gangs’. The book recounts her experiences in her early 20s as a member of Aroha Trust, a work cooperative for gang women in Wellington, where she learnt to paint and renovate houses, cut scrub, and lay cats eyes on the city streets. Pip has also worked as a bus driver, barmaid, caterer and cleaner. She is married with three children and two beautiful grand-children. This is her first book.;