fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

Kim Westwood is an Australian author born in Sydney and currently living in Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory.

She has won the Aurealis Award twice, a Scarlet Stiletto Award and a Ditmar Award. She was shortlisted for six awards including the Aurealis Awards, James Tiptree, Jnr., the Ned Kelly and the Davitt awards for her short stories and novels, a number of which have appeared in Years Best anthologies in Australia and the US, as well as broadcast on radio[1] and podcast.[2] She received a Varuna Writer's House Fellowship for her first novel, The Daughters of Moab, published in 2008 and shortlisted for an Aurealis Award.[3] Her second novel, The Courier's New Bicycle (2011), was selected for the Honour List of the 2011 James Tiptree, Jr. Award,[4] and won an Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel[5] as well as a Ditmar Award for Best Novel (Ditmar Award results). It has been reviewed as "a disturbingly credible and darkly noir post-cyberpunk tale"[6] with a "brilliantly evoked atmosphere of secrecy and threat"[7] carried by a "strong, empathetic central character [and] fast paced narrative".[8]

Westwood developed her distinctive visual sensibility while working as a theatre performer and deviser. Darkly poetic, her stories are underscored by feminist and gender politics, and have a preoccupation with humanity's capacity for destruction and equal instinct for survival. Most are set in a near-future Australia. Of this she says, "My imagination has a chemical reaction to living in Australia, and responds strongly to its particular properties".[9] By example, The Daughters of Moab has been reviewed as "a richly peopled canvas, of which perhaps the real star is the landscape, so intensely depicted as to be almost a presence".[10]

Bibliography

Novels

• The Daughters of Moab (HarperCollins, 2008)
• The Courier's New Bicycle (HarperCollins, 2011)

Short stories

• "The Oracle", Redsine #9 (2002); Znak Sagite (2005)
• "Temenos", Agog! Smashing Stories (2004)
• "Stella’s Transformation", Encounters – an Anthology of Australian Speculative Fiction (2004); Year's Best Fantasy #5 (2005)
• "Tripping Over the Light Fantastic", Orb Speculative Fiction #6 (2004); The Year’s Best Australian SF and Fantasy Vol. 1 (2005)
• "Haberdashery", The Devil in Brisbane (2005)
• "1Blue", Agog! Ripping Reads (2006)
• "Cassandra’s Hands", (2006) in Eidolon I (ed. Jonathan Strahan, Jeremy G. Byrne)
• "Cassandra's Hands", (author's revised version) Escape anthology (2011)
• "Terning tha Weel", Aurealis #36 (2005); The Year’s Best Australian SF and Fantasy Vol. 3 (2007)
• "Nightship", Dreaming Again (2008)
• "Last Drink Bird Head", Last Drink Bird Head (2009)
• "By Any Other Name", Anywhere But Earth (2011)

Fellowships

• Varuna Writers' House Fellowship (2004)

Awards and nominations

Award

• 2002 Aurealis Award, Horror Short Story: The Oracle
• 2011 Scarlet Stiletto Awards, Judges' Prize: Trouble in Nine Acts
• 2011 Aurealis Award, Best Science Fiction Novel, The Courier's New Bicycle
• 2012 Ditmar Award, Best Novel, The Courier's New Bicycle

Shortlisted

• 2005 Aurealis Award, Science Fiction Short Story: Terning tha Weel
• 2008 Aurealis Award, Fantasy Short Story: Nightship
• 2008 Aurealis Award, Science Fiction Novel: The Daughters of Moab
• 2011 James Tiptree, Jnr. Award: The Courier's New Bicycle
• 2012 Ned Kelly Awards: The Courier's New Bicycle
• 2012 Davitt Award: Best Adult Crime Fiction The Courier's New Bicycle

References

External links

• VanderWorld (under occupation): KIM WESTWOOD: ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN WRITER ON THE RISE
• http://tiptree.org/award/2011-james-tiptree-award/honor-list Archived 23 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine

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