Tane's War

Brendaniel Weir grew up in Auckland. At the age of 16, after inadvertently coming out by taking part in a gay-rights march, he found himself homeless. Auckland's gay community became his surrogate family and he completed a BA in Educational Psychology at Auckland university. Discovering a passion for flying, he trained as a pilot then developed a resource to teach Instructional techniques to pilots. In 1993 he wrote and presented the educational series The Keyboard Teacher which became a music-education tool for a generation of school children in New Zealand and Australia. He has worked in various areas of Film and Television production ever since. ​ In 2015, while lecturing at AUT, Brendan was invited to help create the SameSameButDifferent readers and writers festival. He also facilitates writing seminars as part of Auckland Pride festival. ​ Tane's War was born in 2013 as part of Brendan's Master of Creative Writing thesis, a screenplay for which he received First Class Honours as well as the Postgraduate Writing Award. The novel Tane's War uses the screenplay as its starting point and explores themes of identity, marginalization and family across different decades.