Asked why she studied German and Psychology, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington alumna Catherine Chidgey used to tell people she wanted to read Freud in the original.
It took a stint in Berlin on a student scholarship to help her realise she actually wanted to be a writer.
“I’ve always had a love for the written word and the strange and wonderful things you can do with language. Doing German and French, alongside English and Russian literature, brought me a deeper awareness of those things that had obsessed me for years,” she says.
Back in 1997, Catherine joined the first intake of students to Professor Bill Manhire’s Master of Arts in Creative Writing course. It gave her the chance to get her unfinished manuscript of In a Fishbone Church in front of British publishing agent Caroline Dawnay.
“Bill thought she might like it, so took it to London. She signed me and she negotiated the publication deals for my first book overseas.”
Catherine’s written six other novels since, picking up plaudits along the way.
This year, Remote Sympathy was longlisted for the United Kingdom Women’s Prize for Fiction and became the first novel by a New Zealander shortlisted for the prestigious Dublin Literary Award. In 2017, Catherine won the $50,000 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for her fourth novel, The Wish Child.
Both Remote Sympathy and The Wish Child are set in Nazi Germany. “It is a period that fascinates me, in no small part because of the way that language was manipulated at the time and propaganda came into its own. When I went to Berlin first in 1993, four years after the Wall came down, it drove home the immediacy of history.”
Today, “it feels as if there’s a real danger of that history being forgotten”, she says.
Catherine cites a survey by Jewish organisation the Claims Conference that found almost two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 39 were unaware six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. “It underscores the need to keep telling that story and to keep it alive in our consciousness.”
If she had any advice for her younger self, it would be not to be so shy about her writing. “I think if I had started sharing my work when I was 18, I could be that much further along. Getting feedback prepares you for being published and being reviewed, and helps you to grow not necessarily a thick skin, but a few layers of protection.”
Her seventh novel, The Axeman’s Carnival, was released by her long-time publishers Te Herenga Waka University Press in October 2022. In addition to her own writing, Catherine teaches creative writing at the University of Waikato.