Time is of the essence for one of our nation’s most celebrated fiction authors, as an exceptional edition of the Auckland Writers Festival prepares for lift-off this week.

Catherine Chidgey will feature at four separate events and an awards night at Aotearoa’s premier event for wordsmiths and devotees. It’s bursting clear of the pandemic from 16-21 May, amid divisive council plans to review future funding for the super city’s arts and entertainment sector.

Chidgey is on the shortlist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the prestigious Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for last year’s remarkable novel The Axeman’s Carnival - which will be announced at a ticketed event on Wednesday night at Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre.

Busy times

The Big Idea caught up with the focused and driven author behind deeply researched, richly crafted and harrowing novels Remote Sympathy, the deeply personal comeback novel The Wish Child and her latest award-nominated masterpiece - as well as a soon-to-be-released noir thriller, Pet.

Typically for the energetic Chidgey, she agrees to a Zoom interview during a busy weekend, including a children’s birthday party in Auckland and a trip to Wellington to collect a rescue cat.

She lives in semi-rural Ngāruawāhia with her husband and daughter, a comfortable commute to her other job as a senior lecturer in English at Waikato University. It pays the bills for her literary mission to make up for lost time - which she candidly describes as an obsession.

She’ll be featuring with some of the planet’s most intriguing literary minds including the double-Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead from the Big Apple and three Booker Prize winners - Aotearoa’s own Eleanor Catton, Bernardine Evaristo, and Shehan Karunatilaka. There’s also the current TS Eliot prize winner and acclaimed London-based musician Anthony Joseph.

Illustrious company indeed for Chidgey, who’s on the frontline with a bumper line-up of around 200 homegrown talents.

“They’re really special occasions, kicking off with the Ockhams, then several days in a row of just the best of literary events and just the best lineup of international and local stars .. a chance to get to know the work of writers who you might not have experienced before is always a fantastic aspect of it for me.

“But it's like Glastonbury (the sprawling UK musical extravaganza) - a huge festival where there are all these different offerings happening all day, every day. You can just pick and choose where you want to go next, it’s such a treat, always a highlight on the literary calendar for sure.”

Ockhams in focus

The kudos and a healthy cash incentive for the fiction winner would be a serious boost for Chidgey - who pours so much knowledge, effort and creativity into her richly textured novels, as shown in the Ockham nominated The Axeman's Carnival.

She took out the top prize for The Wish List in 2017, but missed out in 2021 to Airini Beatrais' breakout fiction hit Bug Week with her internationally acclaimed historical novel on nazi Germany, Remote Sympathy.

“It’s so lovely to be recognised on the shortlist,” Chidgey explains. “I’ve been in a position of being there on the night and winning and being there on the night and not winning. So I’ve experienced it from both sides.

“The fact that such a fuss is made of New Zealand fiction and that so much attention is brought to all the works on the long list and the short list is a wonderful thing. Because it still feels like - in bookshops anyway - that we have to struggle to get our books on the shelves and seen and bought. I think that’s slowly starting to change.

“The fact $64,000 is attached to the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction is another wonderful way of grabbing people’s attention. It’s an exceptional prize for the author who collects it, but is also for marketing purposes - ‘hey, look at what we’re offering, look what’s up for grabs for the writers who are in the running’.”

Concocting marvellous works of painstakingly researched and exquisitely crafted fiction does not pay the bills alone on home shores, and Chidgey’s lecturing role at Waikato University feeds the passion.

“I’m not giving up my day job any time soon,” she laughs.

“Because I need it for an income - not to mention that I love it and it leads into my writing in mysterious and useful ways.

The festival curators have assembled their proliferation of globally famous talent, to weave their lyrical magic along with First Nations writers from Aotearoa, Australia and Canada, and a vast array of homegrown writers. 

And Chidgey wouldn’t miss it - both as a participant and a lover of all things literary.

“What a treat, and we’ve got three Booker (prize) winners .. so I’ll be certainly going off to all of those. I can’t wait to take part in my AI session, as well along with some international experts in the dawn of ChatGPT - the new bot technology - and what it means for writing and what it might mean for someone like me.”

Sacrifice pays off

Chidgey has become prolific in recent times, after taking 13 years away from the turmoil and sheer scale of writing long-form books as she dealt with infertility, IVF treatment and surrogacy. 

You could describe them as the lost years - but they eventually delivered the happiest of endings with a daughter, and the chance to make up for lost time. The pandemic and mortality have also been key factors behind stage two of her brilliant career.

“Lockdown was kind to me in that respect, I did do a lot of writing .. but also it coincided with me turning 50 a couple of years ago and people started to die around me. 

“I just started thinking about how little time I have left and how much I still want to say, how many stories I still want to tell, which sounds quite morbid. But I don’t really see it that way. It felt like a real revitalisation of my writing, for me.

“I’m already well into the novel after Pet - ‘Obsessive and driven’ ... “ she concedes.

Chidgey has a self-imposed, gruelling routine. Early mornings and late nights are her mantras to deliver on her gift for concocting complicated and unlikely characters into tightly woven stories furnaced by traumatic events.

“Because I lecture full-time in creative writing at the University of Waikato - the only way I can write something as big and unwieldy as a novel is to start early each morning. So between 6-8:30am, I write, then I drop our daughter to school and I do my day job and again in the evenings, I write - even when I’ve gone to bed. 

“I do the morning and evening shifts seven days a week so it is quite mad and I’m a little bit superstitious about disrupting that punishing schedule, in case it all kind of dissipates and disappears. But at the moment, it’s what’s working for me”.

Festival feels

At AWF, she’ll be talking about Tama the magpie and what’s been described as a ‘Kiwi gothic classic’ at Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre at Aotea Centre on Friday .. the event’s biggest stage.

“It is a fantastic venue and the fact that it’s so central just gives the whole festival such a buzz. 

“The atmosphere is always pumping when you’re there on the day and you can see people queuing up to go into the next session and people queuing from an early session to get their books signed by their literary heroes.”

The six-day festival reaches far beyond established fiction writers - with a focus on foodies, songwriting and a free entry event for the kids called Pukapuka Adventures. Chidgey features here too - as part of a Fall in Love with Books segment, where she’ll expand on her children’s book Jiffy’s Greatest Hits - the misadventures of a cat.

It’s a far cry from her next release, with Pet due out in early June.

“It’s set at a New Zealand primary school in 1984, told from the point of view of a 12-year-old girl who falls under the spell of her very charismatic new teacher. But slowly things start to take a dark twist and our narrator Justine doesn’t know who she can trust.

 “It’s kind of my first foray into what you could call a thriller. I suppose it’s a literary slash sociological thriller”.

Despite her impressive collection of both books and accolades, Chidgey still considers herself as having plenty of room for improvement as she expands her repertoire.

“I feel with each book I’m trying something I haven't tried before, which keeps me interested in the process and I think it keeps my readers interested too. My next book has elements of dystopian literature which I haven’t written before. With The Axeman’s Carnival, I’ve definitely never written from the point of view of a non-human.”

She has her own view on the fiercely divisive budget cuts proposed for the arts and entertainment sector by the cash-strapped Auckland Council. This year’s Festival is a bumper edition with big-name attractions - but what about 2024 and beyond?

“I’m horrified as everyone else is and I don’t know if I have anything new to add to that general sense of horror and disbelief.

“It is fantastic that Bridget (van der Zjipp, AWF Curator) and her team have come roaring back to centre stage with a really great programme. I’m really excited that we’ll have that feeling of anticipation around the festival, and genuinely worried about the future of the festival and arts in general.”

A talking magpie, a singing cat, a literary debate over whether AI can write a book, and a finalist at one of Aotearoa’s top awards ceremonies. It’s going to be quite a week in the extraordinarily busy life of Catherine Chidgey.