News article

ELEANOR CATTON ANNOUNCED AS A NEW GENERATION AWARD WINNER

The $25,000 prize was presented to Eleanor Catton on 14th December.  The New Generation Awards are funded by Freemasons New Zealand and are available to artists in the early stage of career with significant achievements and an exciting future ahead. 

The recipients were selected, without knowing they were under consideration, by a Curator appointed by the Arts Foundation.  This year’s Curator was Lynn Freeman from National Radio’s Arts on Sunday. "It was an absolute pleasure selecting the artists for these awards" said Lynn Freeman, "while it was incredibly difficult to arrive at the final selections from a long list of high achieving young artists, it is very satisfying to know that there is an incredible depth of talent in New Zealand".

Ellie has been praised in international reviews for her novel The Rehearsal.  The Daily Mail  has called her the "golden girl of fiction," while The Times described her as "a starburst of talent". She has already received a number of awards, including being short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize; long-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Amazon Rising Stars promotion 2009.  She was also winner of the Betty Trask Award for Best First Novel 2009 and winner of the NZ Society of Authors' Hubert Church Best First Fiction Award. She has signed major contracts with prestigious international publishers and the list of foreign language publications for The Rehearsal is now up to 12. She is working on a second literary novel, titled The Luminaries, which takes place in Hokitika, in 1866, and on a quartet of fantasy novels set during the English Civil War. She currently holds a position as Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Iowa, where she teaches Creative Writing and Popular Culture.

To hear an interview with Ellie on Radio New Zealand, please follow this link.