Author Eleanor Catton is the joint-winner of the Herald's New Zealander of the Year for 2013. The Man Booker prize winner talks to Geoff Cumming about fame, childhood and why she needs to push the boundaries every time she writes
Eleanor Catton is one of the three winners for New Zealander of the Year. Photo / APN
Eleanor Catton is one of the three winners for New Zealander of the Year. Photo / APN

Eleanor Catton is late for a very important date. A snowstorm in northern California has put her a day behind schedule to reach Portland, Oregon, leaving less time for a rummage through Powell's Books, the new and second-hand bookstore that takes up an entire city block.
Catton likes nothing better than reading and re-reading books. The books she read as a child shaped her more than anything else, she says.

 There's been precious little time for books since the Christchurch-raised novelist won the Man Booker Prize for The Luminaries.
She's been on a circuit of book promos, cocktail parties and media interviews in Britain, Canada and the United States since before mid-October. Next stop is Seattle, then New York, then Chicago for Christmas. She won't get back to the Mt Eden apartment she and poet partner Steve Toussaint share with her cats until after New Year's Day.
"It definitely hasn't been all work." In North America, she's been catching up with relatives and friends from her fellowship at the Iowa writer's workshop in 2008, where she wrote some chapters of The Luminaries.
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