Eleanor Catton: Birnam Wood

Eleanor Catton became the youngest winner of the Booker Prize in 2013 for her sprawling Victorian mystery The Luminaries. Its keenly anticipated follow-up, Birnam Wood, is a psychological thriller set in rural New Zealand, where super-rich foreigners face off with ragtag locals on the eve of a global catastrophe. Eleanor returns to the Festival in conversation with Beejay Silcox about her gripping story that brings kaleidoscopic insight into what drives us to survive.
Eleanor Catton appears thanks to the support of Rosemary Block.

A Sydney Writers’ Festival Live & Local Livestream event.

ABOUT ELEANOR CATTON

Eleanor Catton is the author of The Luminaries (Granta, 2013), winner of the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award and an international bestseller. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal (Granta, 2009), won the Betty Trask Prize, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the Orange Prize. As a screenwriter, she adapted The Luminaries for television, and Jane Austen’s Emma for feature film. Born in 1985 in Canada and raised in New Zealand, she now lives in Cambridge, England. Her most recent book Birnam Wood is out now.

ABOUT BEEJAY SILCOX

Beejay Silcox is a writer and critic currently based in Canberra. Her reviews and cultural commentary regularly appear in national arts publications, and are increasingly finding an international audience. Beejay has stories to tell. She’s been kicked in the head by a mountain gorilla, blessed by a voodoo priest and stuck in quicksand; she eloped to Las Vegas, and drove to Timbuktu in a car held together with a bra-strap.