Eleanor Catton

The Luminaries was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries by TVNZ and BBC Two, which debuted on 17 May, 2020. Catton also served as screenwriter for the miniseries.

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:

Wolfe, Graham. "Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal: Theatrical Fantasy and the Gaze." Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 49.3 (2016): 91–108.

Catton lives in Auckland with her husband, American/New Zealand author and poet Steven Toussaint, and teaches creative writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology. They married in January 2016.

During an interview at the Jaipur Literary Festival in January 2015, Catton said that the governments of Australia, Canada and New Zealand were led by "neo-liberal, profit-obsessed, very shallow, very money-hungry politicians who do not care about culture... They care about short-term gains. They would destroy the planet in order to be able to have the life they want. I feel very angry with my Government".

In January 2015, on air RadioLive host Sean Plunket called Catton a traitor and an "ungrateful hua". The Taxpayers' Union also released a media statement showing Catton had received around $50,000 in Creative New Zealand support over her career. Jordan Williams of the Taxpayers' Union 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 2014 she used her winnings from the NZ Post Book Award to establish the Lancewood/Horoeka Grant. The grant offers a stipend to emerging writers with the aim of "the means and opportunity not to write, but to read, and to share what they learn through their reading with their colleagues in the arts". Recipients have included Amy Brown, Craig Cliff and Richard Meros.

Catton's second novel, The Luminaries, was published in 2013. The novel is set on the goldfields of New Zealand in 1866. It was shortlisted for and subsequently won the 2013 Man Booker Prize making Catton, at the age of 28, the youngest author ever to win the Booker. She was previously, at the age of 27, the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

At 832 pages, The Luminaries is 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." Catton was presented with the prize by the Duchess of Cornwall on 15 October 2013 at Guildhall.

In November 2013 Catton was awarded the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for fiction for The Luminaries. 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.

In 2011, she was the Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury. In 2016, The Rehearsal was adapted into a film that was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

Catton's debut novel, The Rehearsal, was published in 2008. It was written as her Master's thesis, and deals with reactions to an affair between a male teacher and a girl at his secondary school. That year, she was awarded a fellowship to the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Eleanor Catton MNZM (born 24 September 1985) is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Man Booker Prize.