Catherine Chidgey at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards with her novel The Axeman's Carnival. Photo / Marcel Tromp
Catherine Chidgey at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards with her novel The Axeman's Carnival. Photo / Marcel Tromp
University of Waikato lecturer Catherine Chidgey has won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for the second time, this time for her novel The Axeman’s Carnival.
Chidgey is the only author to have won two Acorns, the first coming in 2017 for her fourth novel The Wish Child.
The book awards, established in 1968, are the annual literary honours for books written by New Zealand authors. Since 2016, the awards have been held as part of the Auckland Writers Festival.
The Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize, named after the Tauranga radiologist and literary philanthropist who died last year, comes with a $64,000 cash prize.
The Axeman’s Carnival, published in October last year,is Chidgey’s seventh novel and is a contemporary story written from the perspective of a magpie called Tama who lives on a high-country farm in Central Otago.
Tama becomes a sensation on social media and witnesses the domestic violence and conflict between the couple who take him under their wing.
Chidgey says winning the Acorn prize is “akin to receiving an Oscar”.
“Winning the first Acorn was the highlight of my career, so it’s really lovely now to have the other bookend, a pair of Acorns, on the mantelpiece.
The Axeman's Carnival features Tama, a high-country magpie who becomes a sensation on social media. Image / Jess Newton
“The prize is a life-changing amount of money for a writer, and it is fantastic that New Zealand fiction has received more recognition in recent years.”
The fiction category’s convenor of judges, Stephanie Johnson, says the reason for Chidgey’s win is that her book “clasped to New Zealanders’ hearts”.
“Catherine Chidgey’s masterful writing explores the diversifying of rural life, the predicament of childlessness, the ageing champ and domestic violence. She provides a perspicacious take on the invidious nature of social media and a refreshing, complex demonstration of feminist principles.
“The underlying sense of dread as the story unfolds is shot through with humour and humanity. The Axeman’s Carnival is unique: poetic, profound and a powerfully compelling read from start to finish.”
Catherine Chidgey previously won the fiction prize in 2017. Photo / Ebony Lamb
Chidgey has been a senior lecturer in English at the University of Waikato since 2018. In that role, she founded the Sargeson Prize, New Zealand’s richest short story competition. Entries for this year’s competition are open until June 30.
Chidgey was a writer-in-residence at the universities of Canterbury, Otago and Waikato and has won multiple awards for her writing, including the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship (allowing the winner to live in southern France for three months or more).
She holds degrees in German literature, psychology and creative writing from the Victoria University of Wellington. In 1993 she went to Germany to study in Berlin, where she held a scholarship for postgraduate research in German literature.
Born in Auckland and raised in Lower Hutt, Chidgey now lives in Waikato with husband Alan Bekhuis and their daughter Alice. Chidgey is set to release her eighth novel, Pet, on June 8.
