Panni Palásti was born in Budapest, Hungary, and educated there. She entered the United States as a refugee after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and continued her studies in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. She worked as a teacher and journalist in California before sailing with her husband and son to New Zealand in 1973. Panni lived in Russell, Bay of Islands, for 28 years, where she published the Russell Review and started the Russell Writers’ Workshop. She moved to Nelson in 2002.