Carl Nixon

Nixon was born and grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand. He attended St Andrew's College.[2] He has said that he had remedial reading lessons as a child and "didn't really get into books until I was ten or so".[3]

In 1992, Nixon graduated with a master's degree in Religious Studies from the University of Canterbury. He briefly taught secondary school English before leaving to teach in Japan for two years.[1]

Nixon was one of the founding members of The Court Jesters, an improvisation troupe at the Court Theatre in Christchurch, in 1989.[4] He began his writing career writing children's plays for the Court Theatre.[5] He also wrote a young adult novel, Guardians of Mother Earth, published in December 1996.[6]

He began writing for adults in 1997, and won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition, for My Father Running with a Dead Boy in 1997 (his first short story)[5] and Weight in 1999.[1] He was a runner up in the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Short Story Competition in 1999 and won the premier prize in 2007.[7] His first collection of short stories, the best-selling Fish 'n' Chip Shop Song (Random House, 2006), was short-listed in the Best First Book Southeast Asia and South Pacific Region category in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2007.[8]

Nixon was the Ursula Bethell/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury in 2007, where he completed his first novel, Rocking Horse Road (Random House, 2007).[8] Reviewing Rocking Horse Road in North & South magazine in August 2007, Warwick Roger said: "Nixon writes beautifully. He gets the style and timbre of teenagers just right ... Nixon has fulfilled the promise he showed with last year's book of short stories, Fish 'n' Chip Shop Song."[9] He subsequently published two further novels, Settlers' Creek (Random House, 2010) and The Virgin and the Whale (Random House, 2013).[8] Nixon's first three novels have been translated into German and published by Weidle Verlag in Bonn, Germany.[10] The Virgin and the Whale was titled Lucky Newman in the German translation.[5]

Nixon has written a number of original plays including Mathew, Mark, Luke and Joanne, The Birthday Boy and The Raft, which have been performed throughout New Zealand.[8][11] His play The Raft (2007) was adapted for Radio New Zealand and won Best Dramatic Production 2009 at the 2009 New Zealand Radio Awards.[12] He has also adapted Lloyd Jones' novel The Book of Fame and Nobel prize winner J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace for the stage.[1]

In 2017 Nixon was the recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, one of New Zealand's most prestigious literary fellowships.[13] He spent around three months in 2018 living and writing in Menton, France at the Villa Isola Bella, where Katherine Mansfield herself lived and worked, and was able to complete the first draft of his next novel, The Tally Stick.[14] This novel was published in August 2020.[15] It was well-received by critics, with journalist Philip Matthews describing it as "an efficient, gripping story, a Kiwi Gothic thriller that is confidently and economically told",[16] and Erin Harrington in The Spinoff describing it as "taut and well-plotted, balancing a mounting sense of dread with unexpected payoffs, and dancing across two parallel storylines".[17]

Nixon lives in Christchurch. He is married with two teenage children.[13]

• Official website
• My Father Running with a Dead Boy, short story by Nixon, at the Commuting Book