Iowa Writers’ Workshop Alumna Wins the 2013 Man Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize, established in 1969, honors the author of what the judges consider the best work of fiction written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, or the Republic of Ireland. This year’s winner is Eleanor Catton, a native of Canada who grew up in New Zealand.

At 28, Catton is the youngest author to win the Man Booker Prize in its 45-year history. She was honored for her second novel, The Luminaries (Little, Brown, 2013). The book takes placing during the 1866 gold rush in New Zealand and tells the stories of 12 men who gather for a meeting in a local hotel. At 845 pages, the novel is the longest book to be honored with the Man Booker Prize.

Catton studied English at the University of Canterbury and received a master’s degree in creative writing at the Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2008, she was awarded a fellowship to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. She is now a teacher of creative writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand.