Eleanor Catton wins top Canadian literary prize
The MA in Creative Writing graduate has won the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
Eleanor Catton has won the prestigious Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for her second novel The Luminaries (Victoria University Press, NZ, Granta, UK, 2013). The Governor General's Award follows her Man Booker Prize win last month in London.
The Luminaries was one of five finalist fiction titles for the CAD$25,000 award. Former winners include internationally acclaimed authors Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and Michael Ondaatje. Eleanor was born in Canada, making her eligible for the prize.
'I am excited that national literatures around the world are becoming more porous and more accepting of difference,' she says, 'and on a personal level, it's very nice to have more than one home.'
Eleanor's New Zealand publisher Fergus Barrowman, of Victoria University Press, says the Award is another great accolade for a novel that is proving to be as popular with readers as it is with critics and judges.
Since its release in August, The Luminaries has sat on the top of the New Zealand best-seller charts, and total New Zealand sales will soon top 50,000.
Eleanor completed the MA in Creative Writing at Victoria's IIML in 2007,winning that year's Adam Prize for her manuscript, The Rehearsal. She was subsequently awarded the Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship to study at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Source: Scoop Independent News, 14 November 2013