We are delighted to announce that Eleanor Catton will be appearing at the 2014 Auckland Writers Festival.

In October 2013 Catton was awarded the Man Booker Prize for her astounding second novel, The Luminaries. Set in 1866 during the New Zealand gold rush, The Luminaries was described by the chair of the judges, Robert Macfarlane, as a “dazzling work, luminous, vast”. Read more from the Booker Prize judges here.

Her debut novel The Rehearsal (2008) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Another accolade came for Catton in December 2013 when she was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and named New Zealander of the Year by the New Zealand Herald, an honour she shared with Lorde and Lydia Ko.

Catton has been in the news again recently, for an interview in the Sunday Star-Times in which she said that a planned television adaptation of The Luminaries would be filmed in New Zealand and that she is taking the producer to the West Coast, and in particular Hokitika, where the novel is set.

We are thrilled to welcome Eleanor Catton back to the Auckland Writers Festival stage after her wonderful sessions at the 2013 Festival. More information about her events will be available when our programme launches on Tuesday 18 March. To receive a printed programme in the post sign up here.