Joanna Wane is a senior writer at Canvas - the Weekend Herald’s lift-out lifestyle magazine.

I’m Joanna Wane - senior writer at Canvas. A school trip to the NZ Herald newsroom in the early 1980s inspired me to sign up for ATI’s journalism course, but my first job was with the rival afternoon paper, the Auckland Star. I worked on newspapers and magazines in Sydney and London on my OE and was deputy editor at North & South before joining Canvas. I like to think of myself as a feature writer with a gritty edge. At Canvas, I’ve covered everything from the performing and visual arts (a personal passion of mine) to social issues such as the backlash against dairy farmers, the disturbing level of sexual harassment and assault experienced by teenage girls, and the impact of a prison sentence on an offender’s partner and children. My career has taken me all over the world — travel stories in Alaska, Egypt, Hong Kong; interviewing British novelist Jilly Cooper at her home in Gloucestershire; watching cataract operations at a remote village in Nepal for a feature on the remarkable work of the Fred Hollows Foundation. But the best stories are often much closer to home. Every day I talk to interesting people, or people who have had something interesting happen to them. Sometimes it’s inspiring; sometimes it’s devastating. Being a journalist means asking for people’s trust. That’s a privilege I never take for granted.