Luminaries (Catton)

Author Bio
• Birth—1985
• Raised—Christ Church, New Zealand
• Education—B.A., Umiversity of Canterbury; M.A., Victoria
   University of Wellington
• Awards—Man Booker Prize
• Currently—lives in New Zealand


Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand author whose second novel The Luminaries has been named on the shortlist of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, thus making her the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Set on the goldfields of New Zealand in 1866, The Luminaries is a mystery and a ghost story. The novel was published by Granta in 2013.

Catton's 2007 debut novel, The Rehearsal deals with reactions to an affair between a male teacher and a girl at his secondary school.

Catton was born in Canada while her father, a New Zealand graduate, was completing a doctorate at the University of Western Ontario. She grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand. She attended Burnside High School, studied English at the University of Canterbury, and completed a Master's in Creative Writing at The Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington. She wrote The Rehearsal as her Master's Thesis.[3]

She was described in 2009 by London's Daily Mail as "this year's golden girl of fiction." (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/16/13.)