Sarah Quigley – Academy of New Zealand Literature

ANZL Member

About this Member
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Sarah at the New Brighton Pier. Photo credit: Martin Hunter

Sarah Quigley is a novelist, short-story and non-fiction writer. She has a DPhil in Literature from the University of Oxford, and has published five novels, three collections of short fiction and poetry, a memoir, and a creative writing manual. Publishers include Penguin, Virago, Random House and Head of Zeus. She is a previous winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Award (2001) and the Sunday Star Times Short Story Award (2004), and short-listings for fiction include the Bridport Prize and the Fish Short Story Prize. Reviewing her novel Fifty Days (Virago, 2004) The Observer wrote: ‘Sensual, monstrous and bewitching . . . Quigley’s prose imparts constant shocks of lyricism, intensity and acuity’.

Sarah’s novel The Conductor (Random House NZ, 2011) was the highest-selling adult fiction title in New Zealand in 2011, staying at Number One for twenty weeks. It was subsequently long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and short-listed for the Prix Femina in France, and has been widely translated. Her poetry and short stories have been published in multiple anthologies and journals such as takahē, NZ Listener, Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, New Writer UK, 100 New Zealand Short Short Stories, and Mutes and Earthquakes. Sarah was shortlisted in the Reviewer of the Year category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards (1999 and 2000). In addition, she has received a Buddle Finlay Sargeson Fellowship (1998), and was the joint recipient of the Robert Burns Fellowship (2003).

Since 2000, after winning the inaugural Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency, Sarah has divided her time between Germany and New Zealand. As well as writing fiction and a monthly column for Next magazine (for which she won Best Columnist in the New Zealand Magazine Publishing Awards 2015) she works as an editor at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy in London, and also for various fine art and architecture publishers in Europe.

Sarah’s latest book The Divorce Diaries (Penguin Random House, 2020), which began as a monthly column, is a deeply personal memoir, sometimes serious, sometimes funny, set against the colourful bohemian backdrop of her adopted city, Berlin.

Links

Sarah’s website

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Penguin Books author page

Reviews and interviews

Bibliography: Sarah Quigley

Poetry

Love in a Bookstore or Your Money Back (Auckland UP, 2003)

AUP New Poets 1 (With Anna Jackson and Raewyn Alexander: Auckland UP, 1999)

Fiction

The Suicide Club (Random House NZ: Vintage, 2017)

Tenderness (Short stories: Random House NZ, 2015)

The Conductor (Random House NZ, 2011; Head of Zeus, UK, 2012; as Der Dirigent, Aufbau, Germany, 2012; as Orkestra Sefi, Kirmizi Kedi, Turkey, 2012; as Sinfonia Leningrado, Neri Pozza, Italy, 2012; as La Symphonie de Leningrad, Mercure de France, 2013/ second edition 2014; as Dirigenten, Juritzen Forlag, Norway, 2013; as Dirigent, Jota, Czech Republic, 2013; as Dyrygent, Marginesy, Poland 2014)

Fifty Days (Virago, 2005/ second edition 2006)

Shot (Virago, 2003/ second edition, 2004)

After Robert (Penguin NZ, 1999; Penguin UK, 2000,; as Robert, danach, Knaur, Germany, 2001)

having words with you (Short stories: Penguin NZ, 1998)

Creative Nonfiction

The Divorce Diaries (Random House NZ, 2020)