Madeleine Chapman

Chapman grew up in the Wellington Region.[5] Her father was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, while her mother grew up on Upolu in Samoa.[6] Chapman has Tuvaluan heritage through her maternal grandfather, and Chinese heritage through her great-grandfather.[6] Chapman has nine siblings, and was an avid reader as a child.[6][7]

Chapman received a scholarship to attend Samuel Marsden Collegiate School in Wellington, where she competed in basketball, athletics and cricket events.[7][8][9] In 2011 she won the Norwood Award for Outstanding Girls Under 20 player of the year,[10] and was also named the College Sport Wellington women's Cricket Player of the Year.[11]

From 2010 to 2013, Chapman played cricket professionally for the Wellington Blaze.[12][13][14][2] In 2012, Chapman joined the Samoa women's national cricket team, playing seven rounds in the 2012 Pepsi ICC East Asia Pacific Women's Trophy and topping the batting leader board for the competition.[15][16] Chapman continued to compete for Samoa until 2014.[17]

Representing Auckland-based North Harbour Bays Athletics, Chapman first competed in New Zealand athletics competitions as a javelin thrower in 2013.[1][18] She attended the New Zealand Athletics Championships in 2013, winning two gold medals for the javelin throw.[1] In 2014, Chapman quit athletics due to an injury.[19]

Chapman returned to athletics competitions in late 2016 and 2017.[1] At the Porritt Classic in 2017, Chapman was the champion women's javelin thrower (49.18 m).[20] At the 2017 New Zealand national championships, Chapman won a gold medal with a career-best javelin throw of 50.98 metres,[1] outcompeting national champion Tori Peeters at the competition.[21] As of 2022, this ranks Chapman fourth in the list of record holders for New Zealand Women's javelin throw.[22]

Chapman received a scholarship to attend the University of Auckland, where she studied education.[6][7] While at university, Chapman wrote as a film critic for Craccum, the Auckland University Students' Association magazine.[23][24]

In 2016, Chapman became a staff writer for online magazine The Spinoff,[7] beginning as an intern.[25] In the same year, Chapman was asked to ghostwrite New Zealand professional basketball player Steven Adams' autobiography, which was published in 2018.[26] Chapman had known Adams since childhood, as both had played in Wellington regional high school basketball competitions.[26]

While at The Spinoff, Chapman appeared on Three infotainment television programme The Spinoff TV (2018),[6] and has written and directed Scratched: Aotearoa's Lost Sporting Legends (2019 onwards), an NZ On Air-funded documentary webseries.[27] In 2018, Chapman won the Young Business Journalist of the Year award at the New Zealand Shareholders' Association's 2018 Business Journalism Awards,[28] and the best opinion writer (humour/satire) award at the 2019 Voyager Media Awards.[29] Some of Chapman's best-known works include pieces on housing unaffordability,[30] sleep inertia aiding lamps,[31] and ranking lists of snack foods such as biscuits and lollies.[32] Her 2018 article exposing false country of origin practices by Denise L'Estrange-Corbet's fashion label World won the award for best (single) news story / scoop at the 2019 Voyager Media Awards.[33]

Chapman left The Spinoff as a writer in early 2020, taking a break from journalism.[25] During the same year, Chapman released A New Kind of Leader, a biography of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern she was commissioned to write in 2019.[34][35] When print magazine North & South was relaunched in late 2020, Chapman became the publication's senior editor.[36] In late 2021, Chapman became the co-editor of The Spinoff, alongside long time Spinoff staff writer Alex Casey.[37][38]