Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton MNZMis a Canadian-born New Zealand author. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Man Booker Prize. In January 2015, she created a short-lived media storm in New Zealand when she made comments in an interview in India in which she was critical of "neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture."...
NationalityNew Zealander
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth24 September 1985
hardware paper school state store straight worked
I went to a state school in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then straight on to the University of Canterbury. But I worked part-time all the way through high school: first with a paper round, then at a fast-food outlet, a video store and a hardware store.
craft environment order workshop writers
I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve.
framing joyous money outing selection spent trip
A trip to the picture framer's, with a selection of prints, is the most joyous outing I can imagine. I've spent more money on framing than on anything else I own.
moods
Sometimes I'll read something on Twitter, and I'll just be in the darkest of moods for the rest of the day or the rest of the week sometimes.
associate drinking felt full imagine lied people teased time ways wearing
There are so many ways of posturing that people associate with being a writer. They imagine you wearing a beret and drinking only red wine and being full of yourself, and so, for a long time, the way I felt about writing was too private. I felt it too important and didn't want to be teased about it. So I lied about it.
fell home love youth zealand
My father is an expatriate American; he fell in love with New Zealand in his youth and never went home.
creative fiction problems solve trying
I think that's what fiction writing is actually all about. It's about trying to solve problems in creative ways.
divine
What I feel is that true creation happens when you're making something out of nothing - like it's divine, you know. Creation is a completely divine concept.
novels
When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!'