Charlotte Grimshaw

Charlotte Grimshaw (born 1966) is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer, columnist and former lawyer. Since the publication of her debut novel Provocation (1999),[1] she has received a number of significant literary awards including the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship in 2000 and the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award for short fiction in 2006.[2] Her short-story collection Opportunity (2007)[3] won the Montana Award for Fiction and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry at the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.[4] She has also won awards for her book reviews and column writing.[2]

Charlotte Grimshaw
BornCharlotte Mary Stead
1966 (age 54–55)
Auckland, New Zealand
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • short-story writer
  • columnist
LanguageNew Zealand English
Nationality New Zealand
Alma materUniversity of Auckland
Years active1999–present
SpousePaul Grimshaw
Children3
RelativesC.K. Stead (father)
Website
Official website

Family and early career

Grimshaw was born in Auckland in 1966.[5][6] She is the daughter of well-known New Zealand author and academic C. K. Stead and his wife Kay. She has an older brother and younger sister.[7]

Grimshaw graduated from Auckland University with degrees in law and arts.[8] She worked first for commercial law firm Simpson Grierson, and then for a criminal barrister, taking part in murder and manslaughter trials, before leaving the law to write fiction.[7] While working at Simpson Grierson she met her husband, Paul Grimshaw, and chose to take his last name when they married, in part to separate herself from her father's work and to make her own way as a writer.[6] They have three children.[9]

Literary career

Grimshaw's first novel, Provocation (1999), drew on her experience as a criminal lawyer.[1][6] The novel received positive reviews both in the United Kingdom (where it was first published) and in New Zealand. Catharina van Bohemen, reviewing for the New Zealand Review of Books, praised Grimshaw's "sense of humour, her delight in words, her ability to create atmosphere through evocative descriptions of the weather and the landscape, and the novel's strong conclusion", and said these strengths outweighed "occasional quibbles that there are too many characters or that nearly all the men's eyes are bloodshot".[10] A review in The Times said Grimshaw "shows a level of accomplishment unusual in a first time writer, her shiny diamond-hard prose suiting her subject matter perfectly", and called the novel "a deliciously dark treat".[2] It was shortlisted for the Creasey First Crime Fiction Award at the 1999 Crime Writers' Association Awards.[11][12]

Her second novel, Guilt (2000),[13] followed the lives of four characters in Auckland in 1987. Her third novel, Foreign City (2005),[14] as split into three parts: the first about a young New Zealand painter living in London, the second about her daughter's life in Auckland and the third set in a fictional city. One reviewer commented that the book "could have degenerated into a mess", but Grimshaw's "deft hand with characterisation, irony and wit and an eye for deviant behaviour makes gripping reading".[15]

In 2006, Grimshaw won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award for her short story "Plane Sailing".[16] She has contributed short stories to a number of anthologies, including Myth of the 21st Century (Reed 2006), The Best New Zealand Fiction Volumes Two, Three, Four and Five (Vintage), The New Zealand Book of the Beach Volumes One and Two (David Ling), Some Other Country (VUP) and Second Violins (Vintage, 2008).[2]

Grimshaw's first collection of short stories, Opportunity, was published in 2007.[3] The collection was a series of short stories that could be read separately, but which have interlinked themes and characters. Grimshaw described it as "a novel with a large cast of characters ... each story stands by itself, and at the same time adds to the larger one".[2] Opportunity was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award,[17] and won the Montana Award for Fiction and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2008.[4] The judges' comments said: "By turns touching, funny, dark, and redemptive, this is a book for reading through then re-reading in a different order, for following clues, for setting aside and thinking about, and for getting lost in."[18] Her second interconnected short-story collection, Singularity, a companion volume to Opportunity, was published in 2009.[19] Singularity was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and for the South East Asia and Pacific section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.[20][2]

Her subsequent novels, The Night Book (2010),[21] Soon (2012),[22] and Starlight Peninsula (2015),[23] further explored the cast of New Zealand characters and settings from her collections Opportunity and Singularity, including in particular David Hallwright, a National Party Prime Minister, and his friend Dr Simon Lampton, an obstetrician.[24][25] The Night Book was shortlisted for the fiction prize at the New Zealand Post Book Awards,[2] and Starlight Peninsula was longlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel in 2016.[26] Reviewer Siobhan Harvey said: "This stunning novel not only brings an authentic conclusion to the knotted lives of its knotted characters, but also continues to provide the 'star-spangled Kiwi metropolis' slant Grimshaw brings to the epic contemporary serial."[27] She has said that in writing Opportunity and its successors she wanted "to explore our many and varied New Zealand voices, accurately, without sentimentality", and that she was inspired by La Comédie humaine, Balzac’s linked novels and stories.[28]

Grimshaw wrote a monthly column for Metro Magazine for eight years,[29] and received the Qantas Media Award for her column in 2009.[30] She regularly contributes book reviews to the New Zealand Listener and The Spinoff. She has judged the Katherine Mansfield Award and the Sunday Times Short Story Competition and is a literary advisor to the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship (formerly the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship).[29]

Her seventh novel Mazarine was published in April 2018.[31] In 2019 her novels The Night Book and Soon were adapted for television by TVNZ into the TV series, The Bad Seed. The novels were also republished by Penguin Random House as a compilation volume titled The Bad Seed.[32]

Prizes and awards
  • Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship (2000)[33]
  • Double finalist and prize winner in the Sunday Star-Times short story competition[2]
  • Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award for short story "Plane Sailing" (2006)[16]
  • Book Council's Six Pack Prize for short story "The Yard Broom" (2007)[2]
  • Montana Award for Fiction and the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry at the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards (2008)[4]
  • Montana Award for Reviewer of the Year (2008)[4]
  • Qantas Media Award (Columnist, General) (2009)[30]
  • Reviewer of the Year at the 2018 Voyager Media Awards (2018)[34]
  • Reviewer of the Year (joint) at the 2019 Voyager Media Awards (2019)[35]

Selected works
Novels
  • Provocation (1999), London: Little Brown
  • Guilt (2000), London: Little Brown
  • Foreign City (2005), Auckland: Vintage
  • The Night Book (2010), Auckland: Vintage
  • Soon (2012), Auckland: Vintage; (2013): London: Jonathan Cape; (2013): Anansi, Canada
  • Starlight Peninsula (2015), Auckland: Vintage
  • Mazarine (2018), Auckland: Vintage
  • The Bad Seed (2019), Auckland: Vintage
Short story collections
  • Opportunity (2007), Auckland: Vintage
  • Singularity (2009), Auckland: Vintage; London: Jonathan Cape

References
  1. Grimshaw, Charlotte (1999). Provocation. London: Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-3491-1258-9.
  2. "Grimshaw, Charlotte". Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  3. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2007). Opportunity. Auckland, N.Z.: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-8694-1879-3.
  4. "Past Winners: 2008". New Zealand Book Awards. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  5. "Grimshaw, Charlotte, 1966–". National Library of New Zealand. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  6. Lea, Richard (2 November 2009). "The fictional world of Charlotte Grimshaw". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  7. "New Zealand's most private author". The New Zealand Herald. 27 June 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  8. Frances, Helen (8 September 2015). "A tale of two literary daughters". NZ Herald. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  9. Grimshaw, Charlotte (6 May 2016). "A difficult daughter, a happy mother". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  10. von Bohemen, Catharina (October 1999). "Provoking self-knowledge". New Zealand Review of Books (40). Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  11. "Dagger Awards". Stop, You're Killing Me!. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  12. "'Provocation' by Charlotte Grimshaw". Reading Matters. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  13. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2000). Guilt. London: Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-3491-1196-4.
  14. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2005). Foreign City. Auckland, N.Z.: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-8694-1727-7.
  15. "Foreign City". Tamaki and Districts Times. 2 June 2005. Archived from the original on 11 June 2008.
  16. Stuart, Hamish (12 October 2006). "Ink runs in blood for award winner Charlotte Grimshaw". NZ Herald. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  17. Crown, Sarah (23 July 2007). "Big names miss out on Frank O'Connor shortlist". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  18. Andrew, Kelly (22 July 2008). "Grimshaw wins Montana honours". The Dominion Post. p. A3.
  19. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2009). Singularity. Auckland, N.Z.: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-8697-9138-4.
  20. Lea, Richard (29 June 2009). "Debut authors dominate shortlist for Frank O'Connor award". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  21. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2010). The Night Book. Auckland, N.Z.: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-8697-9350-0.
  22. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2012). Soon. Auckland, N.Z.: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-8697-9998-4.
  23. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2015). Starlight Peninsula. [Auckland, New Zealand]: Vintage. ISBN 978-1-7755-3822-6.
  24. Le Bas, Jessica (5 May 2010). "Brilliant take on society". Nelson Mail. p. 15.
  25. Walker, Steve (7 October 2012). "Politics at play". Sunday Star-Times. p. E31.
  26. "Ngaio Marsh Award longlist revealed". Stuff.co.nz. 9 June 2016. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  27. Harvey, Siobhan (2 July 2015). "Review: Charlotte Grimshaw's Starlight Peninsula charts Auckland's glitterati". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  28. "50 Years of NZ Book Awards: Charlotte Grimshaw". Academy of New Zealand Literature. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  29. "Charlotte Grimshaw". New Zealand Society of Authors. Retrieved 4 December 2020.
  30. "Herald takes the triple crown at Qantas Awards". NZ Herald. 15 May 2009. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  31. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2018). Mazarine. Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0-1437-7182-1.
  32. Grimshaw, Charlotte (2019). The Bad Seed. Auckland: Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0-1437-7376-4.
  33. "Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship". Grimshaw & Co. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  34. "2018 Winners". Voyager Media Awards. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
  35. "General Winners 2019". Voyager Media Awards. Retrieved 3 December 2020.
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