Catherine Chidgey

ANZL Member

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Photo credit: Fiona Pardington

Catherine Chidgey is a fiction writer and multiple award winner whose five novels have achieved international acclaim. Her latest novel The Beat of the Pendulum (Victoria UP, 2017) was longlisted for the 2018 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize and described as ‘sensationally clever writing’ (Best Books of 2017, Radio NZ), and as ‘genuinely cutting-edge…Chidgey has created her work out of the very fabric of our times. It is art made out of posting, of surface and veneer’ (Landfall). Her much anticipated fourth novel The Wish Child (Victoria UP, 2016) was an instant bestseller, winning both the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award and Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham Book Awards (2017). Diverse in subject and setting, Catherine’s work is ‘writing of extraordinary precision’ (Landfall), crafted by ‘an artist who may claim a perfect ear, an exquisite tone’ (Evening Post), and who ‘finds metaphor, contiguity and paradox wherever she looks’ (NZ Herald). ‘Intelligent, lyrical, disciplined and observant, she is the real deal, the star of her generation’ (NZ Listener).

In a Fishbone Church, Catherine’s debut novel, received Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South-East Asia and South Pacific region), the UK Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Time Out magazine (London) chose her second novel, Golden Deeds, as a book of the year. Golden Deeds was also a 2002 Best Book in the LA Times Book Review, a 2002 Notable Book in the New York Times Book Review, runner-up for the Deutz Medal and serialised by Radio New Zealand. The NZ Herald described Catherine’s third novel, The Transformation, as the ‘best so far’. US bookstore chain Barnes & Noble chose it as a Discover Pick of 2005. Her short fiction is also widely published in anthologies and journals.

Catherine’s numerous accolades include the prestigious BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award (2013) and the Listener Womens’ Book Festival Short Story Award (1997). She received the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters and in 2003 was named best New Zealand novelist under forty by a NZ Listener industry panel. Catherine has held the Sargeson Fellowship, the Todd New Writers’ Bursary, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship (France), the Rathcoola Residency (Ireland), the NZSA Peter and Dianne Beatson Fellowship and the University of Otago Wallace Residency. She has been Writer-in-Residence at the universities of Canterbury, Otago and Waikato.

With degrees in German literature, psychology and creative writing, Catherine now teaches creative writing at the University of Waikato in Hamilton and at Manukau Institute of Technology in Auckland. She has translated children’s picture books from the German for Gecko Press.

Links

New Zealand Book Council profile page

Victoria University Press author page

Wikipedia

Radio New Zealand interview with Wallace Chapman (May, 2017)

Ockhams Award announcements in the New Zealand Herald (2017)

Ockhams Award announcements in Stuff (2017)

Ockham Award winners announcement in New Zealand Book Awards website (2017)

TV3 Newshub interview (2017)

TVNZ Breakfast interview (2017)

Landfall review (2017)

NZ Business Review article (2017)

NZ Herald interview (2017)

Pantograph Punch interview (2017)

NZ Listener interview (2017)

Interview with The Times [UK] (2017)

NZ Listener article ‘A Way with Words’ by Catherine Chidgey (Dec, 2017)

Radio New Zealand Best Books of 2016

Booksellers New Zealand review of The Wish Child [Sue Esterman] (2016)

Booksellers New Zealand review in The Reader [Stella Chrysostomou] (Dec, 2016)

Sunday Star-Times Summer Reading Picks – The Wish Child (Dec, 2016)

North & South review (Dec, 2016)

NZ Herald review of The Wish Child (Dec, 2016)

Paula Green review in the Sunday Star-Times (Nov, 2016)

Takahe review of The Wish Child (Nov, 2016)

Sunday Star Times interview and article regarding The Wish Child (Nov, 2016)

Pressreader (NZ Listener) review of The Wish Child (Nov, 2016)

Radio New Zealand Standing Room Only interview (Nov, 2016)

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Otago Daily Times review of The Wish Child (Nov, 2016)

Bibliography: Catherine Chidgey

Fiction

The Beat of the Pendulum (Victoria UP, 2017)

The Wish Child (Victoria UP, 2016; Chatto & Windus [UK], 2017)

The Transformation (Victoria UP, 2003; Picador [UK & Australia], 2005; Henry Holt [US], 2005; Knopf [Canada], 2005; Picador [US], 2006)

Golden Deeds (Victoria UP, 2000; Picador [UK & Australia], 2000; Henry Holt [US] as The Strength of the Sun, 2002; Picador [US], 2003)

In a Fishbone Church (Victoria UP, 1998; Picador [UK & Australia], 1999)

Journals

Include:

Landfall

NZ Listener

School Journal

Sport

Takahē

Anthologies

Nurse to the Imagination: 50 Years of the Robert Burns Fellowship (Otago UP, 2008)

Second Violins (Vintage, 2008)

Are Angels OK? (Victoria UP, 2006)

Manhire at 60: A Book for Bill (Victoria UP, 2006)

The Colour of Distance (Victoria UP, 2005)

Great Sporting Moments: The Best of Sport Magazine 1988 – 2004 (Victoria UP, 2005)

An Affair of the Heart: A Celebration of Frank Sargeson’s Centenary (Cape Catley, 2003)

Dies ist eine wahre Geschichte: Neuseeländische Autoren in Berlin (DAAD, 2002)

Authors’ Choice (Penguin, 2001)

Morrieson’s Motel (Tandem Press, 2000)

Small Packages (Pearson Education, 2000)

The Picnic Virgin (Victoria UP, 1999)

Another 100 NZ Short Short Stories (Tandem Press, 1998)

Mutes and Earthquakes (Victoria UP, 1997)

Editor

Sport (1999 – 2001)

'Character to some extent is much a construction of the reader as it is of the writer.' - Lloyd Jones

Academy of New Zealand Literature