Catherine Chidgey

Catherine Chidgey is a multiple award-winner whose novels have attracted international acclaim. In a Fishbone Church, her debut novel, won Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South-East Asia and South Pacific region). In the UK, it also won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Golden Deeds, was a Best Book in the LA Times Book Review and a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times Book Review. The Wish Child won the 2017 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize – New Zealand’s richest writing prize. Radio New Zealand called it “a brilliant, brilliant novel…a masterpiece”, and The Times (UK) “a remarkable book with a stunningly original twist”.

Other honours include the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award, the $60,000 Prize in Modern Letters, and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize.

Her latest novel is Remote Sympathy: “You are in the hands of a superb writer…it is profoundly wonderful.” (Radio New Zealand)

Catherine has translated many children’s books from the German and, in 2019, published her first children’s book, Jiffy, Cat Detective. She teaches creative writing at the University of Waikato, where, in 2019, she initiated the Sargeson Prize Short Story Competition. She lives in Ngāruawāhia with her husband, daughter, and odd-eyed cats.

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Catherine Chidgey at DWRF 2021:
The Historical Novel: Germany ​

Photo credit: Helen Mayall