Kim Westwood
Kim Westwood is an Australian author born in Sydney and currently living in Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory.
She is an Aurealis Award winner[1] and twice finalist[2] for her short stories, a number of which have appeared in Years Best anthologies in Australia and the USA, as well as broadcast on radio[3] and podcast.[4] 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.[5] Her second novel, The Courier's New Bicycle (2011), was selected for the Honour List of the 2011 James Tiptree, Jr. Award,[6] and won an Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel[7] 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"[8] with a "brilliantly evoked atmosphere of secrecy and threat"[9] carried by a "strong, empathetic central character [and] fast paced narrative".[10]
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.”[11] 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.”[12]
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
References
- ^ Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2002
- ^ Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2005, 2008
- ^ The Book Show, ABC Radio National, June 2007
- ^ Terra Incognita: the Australian Speculative Fiction podcast site, March 2009
- ^ Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2008
- ^ http://tiptree.org/award/2011-james-tiptree-award/honor-list
- ^ Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2011
- ^ Australian Bookseller+Publisher, July 2011
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald, 27/8/2011
- ^ The Canberra Times, 3/9/2011
- ^ Australian Speculative Fiction: A Genre Overview, Donna Maree Hanson (2004)
- ^ Lucy Sussex, The Sunday Age, 2 November 2008
External links
- http://vanderworld.blogspot.com/2005/08/kim-westwood-another-australian-writer.html
- http://tiptree.org/award/2011-james-tiptree-award/honor-list
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