Catherine Chidgey

ANZL Member

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Photo credit: Fiona Pardington

Catherine Chidgey is a fiction writer and multiple award winner whose novels have achieved international acclaim. Her 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 the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham Book Awards (2017) and the Nielsen Independent NZ Bestseller award (2018). Catherine’s latest novel, Remote Sympathy (VUP, 2020), was shortlisted for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Remote Sympathy is set in Nazi Germany. A tour de force about the evils of obliviousness, Remote Sympathy compels us to question our continuing and willful ability to look the other way in a world that is once more in thrall to the idea that everything – even facts, truth and morals – is relative. 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. She has translated children’s picture books from the German for Gecko Press. Catherine’s first children’s book, Jiffy, Cat Detective, was published by One Tree House in November 2019.

In 2019, with sponsorship from the University of Waikato, Catherine conceived the Sargeson Prize short story competition – New Zealand’s richest short story prize.

Remote Sympathy (novel)

Published by Victoria University Press on October 8, 2020

Bibliography: Catherine Chidgey

Fiction

Remote Sympathy (Victoria UP, 2020)

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)

'One of writing’s greatest magics is to allow us – to use Kiri Piahana-Wong’s phrase – to slide outside the trap of time.' - David Taylor

Academy of New Zealand Literature