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Eleanor Catton (born 1985) is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master's degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, written as her Master's thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize (at age 28) and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter. In 2023, she was named on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.
When she was aged 13 the family spent a year living in Leeds while her father was on a sabbatical at the university, and Catton attended local comprehensive Lawnswood School which she referred to as "amazing" and "gloriously rough". Back in Christchurch she attended Burnside High School, studied English at the University of Canterbury, and completed a Master's degree in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington. She is related to historian Bruce Catton.
That year Catton was awarded a fellowship to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she completed her MFA and taught creative writing until 2011. In 2011, she was the Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury, and in 2012 a writer in residence at the Michael King Writers Centre in Auckland.
In 2016, The Rehearsal was adapted into a film of the same name directed by Alison Maclean. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.
At 832 pages, The Luminaries was the longest work to win the prize in its 45-year history. The chair of the judges, Robert Macfarlane commented, "It's a dazzling work. It's a luminous work. It is vast without being sprawling." Jonathan Ruppin of Foyles said: "I'm confident that she is destined to be one of the most important and influential writers of her generation." Catton was presented with the prize by the Queen Camilla on 15 October 2013 at Guildhall.
In November 2013 Catton was awarded the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for fiction for The Luminaries. Eleanor Catton honoured with Canadian literary award . 3 News NZ. 15 November 2013. In January 2014 it was announced that Catton would be awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature in May at Victoria University of Wellington, where she has studied. In the 2014 New Year Honours, she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature.
When Luminaries was adapted into a television miniseries Catton was screenwriter, an "unusual if not entirely unheard-of" arrangement. Catton wrote hundreds of drafts of the pilot episode, but in late 2015 BBC Two declined the series; she then shifted the focus to make the protagonist Anna Wetherell, a minor character in the book, and rewrote the series, which was commissioned by the BBC in mid-2016. She served as showrunner with director Claire McCarthy during filming. The six-episode TVNZ and BBC series debuted on 17 May 2020.
Catton also wrote the screenplay for the 2020 film version of Emma, adapted from Jane Austen's novel. She admitted she had never actually read the novel when approached to write the screenplay, but was familiar with more recent adaptations, including the film Clueless.
The novel was shortlisted for the 2023 Giller Prize. The New York Times named it one of the 100 Notable Books of 2023.
Prime Minister John Key said he was disappointed at Catton's lack of respect for his Government and claimed she was aligned with the Green Party. The next day he said her views should not be given any more credence than those of the Peter "The Mad Butcher" Leitch or Richie McCaw.
In January 2015, on air RadioLive host Sean Plunket called Catton a traitor and an "ungrateful hua", a Māori slang word which some listeners mistook for "whore". The Taxpayers' Union also released a media statement showing Catton had received around $50,000 in Creative New Zealand support over her career, and argued that "if Ms Catton isn't thankful for the support by the New Zealand Government while she wrote The Luminaries, maybe she should use some of the substantial royalties to pay the money back".
In a blog post responding to the affair, Catton commented that her reported remarks were a condensed part of a larger interview, and she was puzzled why her comment at the Jaipur festival had generated such controversy: "I’ve been speaking freely to foreign journalists ever since I was first published overseas, and have criticised the Key government, neo-liberal values, and our culture of anti-intellectualism many times." She continued:
The criticism of Catton caused a media storm, including the publication of numerous cartoons, and was termed "Cattongate" by political commentator Bryce Edwards. Edwards quoted numerous other commentators who supported Catton's right to express her views, and said the controversy reflected the hollowness of public debate in New Zealand and of the media and politics.
| "Eleanor Catton wins Governor General’s Literary Award for The Luminaries". Toronto Star, 13 November 2013. |
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