About Barbara Sumner

Barbara Sumner is an academic, author and filmmaker. Her achievements include raising four daughters, producing three highly acclaimed feature documentaries, event production, and magazine features writing, and gaining her MA at 61 and a PhD at 64. 

Barbara lives with her husband, cinematographer Thomas Burstyn, in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. She pivots between writing historical fiction (in cafes) and researching and writing about human adoption in Aotearoa.  

Representation:
High Spot Literary, Nadine Rubin Nathan

Research Interests

Barbara coined the neologism ‘adoptology’ to define the study of the structures, functions, history, and purpose of human adoption in society from the perspective of adoptees. Rather than adoptee stories of good or bad adoption, Barbara focuses on the multiple statutory provisions and their implementation from which those stories spring. She asks, is stranger adoption a blind spot in our universal understanding of the fundamental human right to identity? Her work goes beyond the personal to reframe adoption as a statutory scheme that empowers the State to conceal and terminate a person’s identity and to allocate a permanent new identity without consent. She is motivated by adoptee emancipation and full equal rights with the non-adopted.  

Education

PhD, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington, The Illegitimate Other: Adoption and the Manufacture of Identity. A study of the structures, functions, and purpose of human adoption in society. View profile.

Master of Arts in Creative Writing with Distinction, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of Wellington  

Michael King Fellowship recipient 2024. 

Public speaking: Auckland Writers Festival 2021, 2024. Limmud Conference 2022, 2024, U3A, 2024 

Publications

Tree of Strangers (Massey University Press, 2020). An investigative memoir. 

The Gallows Bird (Pantera Press, Sydney, 2024). A historical novel set in 1833 in London and Sydney, based on actual events.  

The Mystifications, based on the true story of the arrival of a cabalistic cult in a small New Zealand village in 1916 (coming soon)

This Way of Life, the book, HarperCollins 2012. Based on the multi-award-winning documentary This Way of Life. 

Features, profiles, opinion columns and investigative articles: The New Zealand, Listener, Sunday Star Times, Urbis. Unlimited, Kia Ora (Air New Zealand), Panorama, NBR, Evening Report, Metro, Pulp, Investigate, Flash, Loop, Grace, New Idea. The Independent on Sunday (UK), Montreal Gazette, Sailing, Harper’s Bazaar, Ottawa Citizen, Maclean’s, Vancouver Sun, Readers Digest, and New Zealand Herald weekly columnist. 

Writer/researcher/producer documentary

This Way of Life: A lionhearted father struggles to create a life of idyllic simplicity for his family. 

Some Kind of Love: Art, Science, Housekeeping. The consequences of obsession are told through an ageing artist, her brother, the scientist, and their dilapidated mansion.  

One Man, One Cow, One Planet: An elderly New Zealander wanders rural India’s back roads, revealing the organics’ miracle. 

Awards

Qantas Best Social Issues Columnist 2004 

Shortlist, 2011 Academy Awards 

Jury Prize, Berlin International Film Festival 

Best Documentary Feature, Qantas Film Awards 

Outstanding Contribution to New Zealand Documentary Industry; DocEdge 2011 

Best Feature Film, Big Sky Documentary, Montana Film Festival 

Special Jury Award, FIFO 

Prix du Jeune Public, Anuu-ru Aboro Film Festival, New Caledonia 

Best Aotearoa Documentary, Wairoa Maori Film Festival 

Best Documentary, Victoria Film Festival, Texas 

Best Documentary, Bend Film Festival, USA 

Best of Festival, Bend Film Festival, USA 

People’s Choice, Iowa Indie Film Festival 

Best Documentary, Iowa Indie Film Festival, 2011, USA 

Best Documentary Director, NZ Qantas Film & TV Award 

Best Arts / Festival / Feature Documentary, NZ Qantas Film & TV Awards 

Outstanding Contribution to New Zealand Documentary, Documentary Edge Festival 

Nom, Best Cinematography for Feature Documentary, Plus Cameraimage, Poland 

Docville, Official Selection, Belgium 

HotDocs, Official Selection, Canada 

Sold to 16 countries for broadcast and theatrical release 

Best Environmental Conservation Film 

CMS Vatravan, India 

Katherine Knight Award: EarthVision International Film Festival 

Best Non-Broadcast Film: Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival 

Award of Excellence: The Accolade 

Hotdocs, pitch prize  

Multiple international broadcast sales and theatrical releases.