Bridget van der Zijpp is the author of three novels – Misconduct, In the Neighbourhood of Fame and I Laugh Me Broken, published with Te Herenga Waka University Press and Gallic Press UK & US. Her first novel was shortlisted for best first book in the Montana NZ Book Awards and the Commonwealth Book Awards.

Bridget was the Artistic Curator of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival, and the Programmer for the 2022 and 2021 Festivals. More recently she was the Co-Curator with Elisabeth Easther of a new literary festival, HamLit2025, part of the Hamilton Arts Festival Toi Ora Ki Kirikiriroa.

Bridget has a MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University (now Te Herenga Waka University). In 2016 she received a Goethe Institut scholarship, alongside a Creative New Zealand grant, and went to live in Berlin for three months to work on a novel (now published as I Laugh Me Broken) but became entranced and stayed there until the beginning of 2020 when the Covid pandemic drove her back home to Auckland. During her time in Germany she set up Manuscriptification, a creative consultancy, and also ran creative writing retreats in a rural area near Berlin.