Panni Palásti was born in Budapest and educated there. She entered the United States as a refugee after the defeat of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and continued her studies in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. She worked as a teacher and journalist in California before sailing with her husband and son to New Zealand in 1973. She lived in Russell for 28 years where she started the Russell Writers’ Workshop and founded and edited Russell Review for two decades before moving to the South Island. She has been writing poems since first grade. Her work has been published in Europe, the United States and in New Zealand.