A Wellingtonian by choice, Rachel Locker McKee grew up in Hamilton. After graduating from Victoria University of Wellington in 1985, she joined New Zealand’s first training course for sign language interpreters. This began a journey into the Deaf world in which she has worked as an interpreter, researcher, writer and teacher. Married to David, a Deaf American, she juggles raising three sons with her other role as Programme Director of Deaf Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Rachel has published a variety of scholarly articles relating to the Deaf community, linguistics of NZ Sign Language, and sign language interpreting. She recently published People of the Eye: Stories from the Deaf World (BWB, 2001), an anthology of Deaf people's life histories, and contributed to the recent publication of A Concise Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language (BWB, 2002).