Fiona Kidman

Dame Fiona Judith Kidman ( Eakin; born 26 March 1940) is a New Zealand novelist, poet, scriptwriter and short story writer. She grew up in Northland, and worked as a librarian and a freelance journalist early in her career. She began writing novels in the late 1970s, with her works often featuring young women subverting society's expectations, inspired by her involvement in the women's liberation movement. Her first novel, A Breed of Women, caused controversy for this reason but became a bestseller in New Zealand. Over the course of her career, Kidman has written eleven novels, seven short-story collections, two volumes of her memoirs and six collections of poetry. Her works explore women's lives and issues of social justice, and often feature historical settings.

Kidman is an influential figure in New Zealand literature and has been active in New Zealand's literary community, including by serving as the president of the New Zealand Society of Authors and the New Zealand Book Council and as a creative writing tutor. She has won a number of prestigious awards over the course of her career, including a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement and the top award for fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards on two occasions.

Early life and career Kidman was born in Hāwera, New Zealand, on 26 March 1940. She was the only child of Flora ( Small) and Hugh Eakin, and as a newborn baby she was briefly hospitalised with a milk allergy. After World War Two, her parents used their savings to put a deposit on a cheap block of land in Kerikeri. They stayed for a while on a British army soldier's farm in Kerikeri, where her parents worked as servants for the family, but later moved into an army hut on their land at the end of Darwin Road, where they lived for seven years. She attended Kerikeri Primary School followed by Northland College, where she has said she won the school English prize when she was aged 13. After her father received an inheritance, the three of them moved to a farm in Waipu.

She married Ian Kidman in 1960, and the couple had two children. He was awarded an MNZM for his service working with landmine victims in Cambodia, In 1970 the couple moved to Wellington with their children where she worked as a writer, screenwriter and television producer. When asked why she became a writer, she has said:

Literary career Novels Kidman's first novel, A Breed of Women, was published in 1979. It was a feminist novel about a young woman defying society's expectations during the 1970s, with roots in Kidman's involvement in the New Zealand women's liberation movement. Due to its controversial subject matter and depictions of sex, it was banned by some schools and libraries, which led to increased sales. In the 1990s her works continued to deal with serious subject matter: True Stars (1990) was a crime novel criticising New Zealand's right-wing economic policies in the 1980s, described by academic Terry Sturm as the "most important political novel" in New Zealand in this period, and Ricochet Baby (1996) was about the impacts of postnatal depression on the sufferer and her family. She is deeply interested in issues of social justice. Craig Sisterson in the New Zealand Listener said of the novel: "This is a tale about violent acts that is infused with humanity and compassion. And although it may be set more than half a century ago, there's a lot here that seems relevant to our modern times."

Kidman is active in the literary community, serving as the first secretary of the New Zealand Book Council in 1972, the National President of the New Zealand Society of Authors (including PEN NZ) from 1981 to 1983, and the President of the New Zealand Book Council from 1992 to 1995. From 2001 to 2016, she was a founding Trustee of the Randell Cottage Writers Trust and is now a Trustee Emerita.

Awards and honours Kidman has received awards and honours since the beginning of her career, including the Ngaio Marsh Award for a television play in 1971 , the New Outlook Short Story Award in 1985, a 1988 Victoria University writing fellowship, an Arts Council Award for Achievement in 1988, and the Scholarship in Letters on a number of occasions. She was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 1998 New Year Honours. At the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards she received the A.W. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006 she received the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship which enabled her to spend time writing in Menton, France. She was the 2008 Creative New Zealand Michael King Fellow, and the New Zealand Society of Authors President of Honour in 2008/2009. Her short story collection The Trouble With Fire (2011) was shortlisted for the fiction prize at the 2012 New Zealand Book Awards, as well as shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. This Mortal Boy (2018) received the 53,000 Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, the NZ Booklovers Award for Best Adult Fiction Book and the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Fiction. It also received the award for best novel at the 2019 Ngaio Marsh Awards. In 2021 she received the inaugural University of Otago Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies (CISS) Irish Writers Fellowship.

Decorations

Selected works

Novels, short-story collections and non-fiction

A Breed of Women (1979) Mandarin Summer (1981) Mrs Dixon & Friend (1982, short story collection) Paddy's Puzzle (1983) (USA title: In the Clear Light) Gone North (1984, non-fiction) The Book of Secrets (1987) Unsuitable Friends (1988, short story collection) Wellington (1989, non-fiction) True Stars (1990) The Foreign Woman (1994, short story collection) Palm Prints (1994, non-fiction) Ricochet Baby (1996) The House Within (1997, short story collection) The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (1998, short story collection) A Needle in the Heart (2002, short story collection) Songs from the Violet Café (2003) The Captive Wife (2005) At the End of Darwin Road (2008, memoirs) Beside the Dark Pool (2009, memoirs) The Trouble with Fire (2011, short story collection) The Infinite Air (2013) Preservation (2013, short story collection) All Day at the Movies (2016) This Mortal Boy (2018) All the Way to Summer (2020, short story collection)

Poetry collections Honey & Bitters (1975) On the Tightrope (1977) Going to the Chathams (1985) Wakeful Nights (1993) Where the Left Hand Rests (2010) This Change in the Light (2016)

Edited works New Zealand Love Stories: An Oxford Anthology (1998) The Best New Zealand Fiction:1 (2004) The Best New Zealand Fiction:2 (2005) The Best New Zealand Fiction:3 (2006)