Catherine Chidgey is a novelist and short story writer whose work has been published to international acclaim. In a Fishbone Church won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in her region. In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Golden Deeds was Time Out’s book of the year, a Notable Book of the Year in The New York Times and a Best Book in the LA Times. She has won the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The Wish Child. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the DUBLIN Literary Award and the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Axeman’s Carnival won the Acorn at the New Zealand Book Awards – the country’s biggest literary prize.
Raised in Wellington, New Zealand, Chidgey was educated at Victoria University and in Berlin, where she held a DAAD scholarship for post-graduate study in German literature. She lives in Ngāruawāhia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.
Books in order of publication:
In a Fishbone Church – 1998
Golden Deeds – 2000
The Transformation – 2003
The Wish Child – 2016
The Beat of the Pendulum – 2016
Jiffy, Cat Detective – 2019
Remote Sympathy – 2020
The Axeman’s Carnival -2022
Jiffy’s Greatest Hits -2022
Pet – 2023
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