Announcement of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award 2017
Janet Frame founded the Janet Frame Literary Trust in 1999 and bequeathed her royalty income to an endowment fund. Since Janet Frame’s death in 2004 the trust has awarded $115,000 in grants and donations to benefit New Zealand authors.
Thursday 20 July 2017
Catherine Chidgey Photo: Helen Mayall |
Waikato novelist Catherine Chidgey has been
named as the recipient of a Janet Frame Literary Trust Award worth $5,000.
Catherine Chidgey is the author of four highly acclaimed novels including her latest book The Wish Child which picked up the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize
at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The
Wish Child has been a bestseller in New Zealand and has just been published
in the UK by Chatto & Windus, with US publication to follow in 2018.
In accepting
the Janet Frame Fiction Prize 2017, Catherine Chidgey said: “Janet Frame was my
first literary hero and still is my number one. Her books have always been very
close to my heart, and so important to my development as a writer. The timing of the award could not be better,
given the recent international release of my novel The Wish Child.” Chatto & Windus Cover 2017 |
Catherine
Chidgey was born in Auckland and has lived in Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin
and Germany. Her next novel The Beat of the Pendulum is due to be published in November this year and she is already
working on another one.
Janet
Frame’s niece and executor Pamela Gordon said “Catherine Chidgey has won almost
every award and fellowship going in New Zealand, so much so that it might seem
too much to offer her another prize, but Janet Frame herself was a great
example of the fact that an established writer can never have too much
encouragement. The Wish Child is an
extraordinary book and Catherine deserves the accolades she has received in her
career. We also wish her well for the writing she is currently undertaking.” Janet Frame in 2003 Photo: Reg Graham |
Janet Frame founded the Janet Frame Literary Trust in 1999 and bequeathed her royalty income to an endowment fund. Since Janet Frame’s death in 2004 the trust has awarded $115,000 in grants and donations to benefit New Zealand authors.
More information
on the Janet Frame Literary Trust Awards: http://www.janetframe.org.nz/Awards.htm
VUP Cover 2016 |