Michael Field first went to Fiji in 1975 and has covered the Pacific region for much of the time since. As well as attending Harvard as a Harkness Fellow and working in Botswana, he lived and worked in Samoa and has covered most of the major events in the region in the last 20 years, including the Tongan democracy movement, the Solomon Islands civil war, Bougainville and numerous elections. His book Mau: Samoa's struggle for freedom charts Samoa's twentieth-century struggle for independence. During the period covered by this book Field was the AFP South Pacific correspondent, a position he held for 15 years.

Author's Pandanus publications

• Speight of Violence: Inside Fiji's 2000 Coup