Catherine Chidgey is a multiple award-winner whose novels have achieved international acclaim.
In a Fishbone Church, her debut, won Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South-East Asia and South Pacific region).
Golden Deeds was a Book of the Year in The New York Times Book Review and the LA Times, while The Wish Child won the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, the Nielsen Independent New Zealand Bestseller award, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize. The Times (UK) called it ‘A remarkable book with a stunningly original twist.’
Her sixth novel, Remote Sympathy, was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (UK), and shortlisted for the €100,000 DUBLIN Literary Award (Ireland).
Her new novel, The Axeman’s Carnival, set in rural New Zealand and narrated by a magpie, appeared in October 2022; Radio NZ called it ‘a remarkable literary feat…wonderfully funny…the novel builds to an absolutely astonishing, visionary scene’.
Catherine teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato and lives in Ngāruawāhia.
In 2019, with sponsorship from the University, she conceived the Sargeson Prize – New Zealand’s richest short story competition. In addition to her novels, she has written two children’s books and has translated many picture books from German.