Carl Nixon

Carl Nixon (born 1967) is a New Zealand novelist, short story writer and playwright. He has written original plays and has adapted Lloyd Jones’ novel The Book of Fame and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. He has won numerous awards for his fiction, including winning and being nominated for key short story competitions. 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. His two novels „Rocking Horse Road“ and „Settlers Creek“ have been translated into German and published by Weidle Verlag in Bonn, Germany. He has also written several plays for children. He writes plays, short fiction and novels. His theatrical works are largely comedies, and humour is an important element of his more serious - even dark - short fiction. He works full-time as a writer.

Born in Christchurch, 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.

Nixon has won and been shortlisted for numerous awards for his short fiction. He has twice won the Sunday Star Times Short Story Competition, for 'My Father Running with a Dead Boy' in 1997 and 'Weight' in 1999. 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.

His first collection of short stories, the best-selling Fish 'n' Chip Shop Song (Random, 2006), was short-listed in the Best First Book Southeast Asia and South Pacific Region category in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2007.

In 2007 Nixon was the Ursula Bethell/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at Canterbury University where he completed his first novel, Rocking Horse Road. Reviewing Rocking Horse Road in North and South magazine in August 2007, Warwick Roger said that '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.'

Nixon's theatrical scripts include an adaption of Lloyd Jones' novel The Book of Fame and of Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Nixon's play, The Raft, was performed as part of the 2007 Christchurch Arts Festival. His plays for children are The Little Mermaid (2000), The Reluctant Dragon (2000), and Beauty and the Beast (2000). He has also published a novel for young adults, Guardians of Mother Earth (1997).

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