Catherine Chidgey’s novels have been published to international acclaim. Her first, In a Fishbone Church, won Best First Book at the New Zealand Book Awards and at the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific). In the UK it won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. Catherine 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. She lives in Cambridge and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. Her 2020 novel, 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 (2022) won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, she followed this with the critically acclaimed Pet (2023). Her most recent novel is The Book of Guilt, which has received widespread acclaim, is a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick for 2025 and is being published in New Zealand, Australia, the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom.