Chidgey week: Catherine, in the beginning

Newsroom

06-05-2025

Alison Wong: I first met Catherine in the early 1990s when we both took a community education creative writing class run by Chris and Barbara Else. As part of the course Chris took us through the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator test, explaining that our personality type influenced how we wrote. About half a dozen of us, including Catherine and myself, had the same personality type. Our profile said that with talent we could be outstanding novelists or character actors.
Catherine and I met again in 1995 when we were both accepted for the Original Composition course at Victoria University. Bill Manhire was on sabbatical and the course was taken by Damien Wilkins. Catherine was working on the manuscript which would become In a Fishbone Church. When I finished reading it I had wet eyes. Her father, who had worked as a builder, was suffering from the lung condition portrayed in the novel. It wasn't an easy year for her, but it was clear she was a hard worker and a fine writer. She won the prize for best portfolio.
Damien Wilkins: I remember her as poised, clear-headed, confident in her work, going places for sure.
Bill and I read the applications for that class together and Catherine was an automatic yes, along with Kate Camp. She had Germany already in her back pocket, having spent time there on a DAAD scholarship, and she had death too. (Her father died that year.) I think this added to the kind of self-possession a novelist usually needs.
If I think of that workshop, which also contained Claire Baylis and Alison Wong, as a high school cohort, then Kate Camp would be the naughty Games Prefect and Catherine would be the girl everyone knew was going to be Dux.
Kate Camp: The notification that you'd got into the creative writing workshop was just a list of the 12 successful applicants. I'd applied under my full name – Catherine – so I looked down the list and saw Catherine – then Chidgey. Fuck. Then I saw right above it, Catherine Camp. So before the class had even begun, I felt a particular link with Catherine, forged in that momentary emotional rollercoaster. Getting into the course was a HUGE deal.
Before the first workshop they sent out a pack that had a piece of writing from each member, from the portfolio we'd submitted to get in. As I recall it, Catherine's extract was a scene from what became In a Fishbone Church (or In a Fishy Church by Catherine Chidgebone which is how someone once asked for at Unity and I always enjoy thinking of the book that way.) In my memory, the scene was of a dream by one of the German neighbours, when she dreams her porcelain figures are exploding, and then the other woman wakes up with the pattern of an embroidered pillowcase flower on her face. Maybe it wasn't that scene, but whatever it was, I remember thinking, holy shit this Catherine Chidgey person is obviously already famous and I just haven't heard of her. It was a wonderful and incredibly finished-seeming piece of writing.
Then we met in the class and I discovered Catherine was this very funny girl from the Hutt with long curly blonde hair – I had long curly brown hair in those days – the VUP hair as we called it eventually because Elizabeth Knox and Nick Ascroft made four. Did she have Doc Marten shoes with flowers on them? It's so hard to remember because we've been friends ever since and 1995 is a long time ago and there's been a lot of shoes under the bridge.
I remember her walk – it's like a cute little march, she has a very practical walk and is in general extremely down to earth, which seems to cut against the pre-Raphaelite hair.
I remember being impressed that she'd lived in Berlin, and done German and French at university. I can't remember when her Dad died, but it was around that time. So young! I remember her German boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) sending a condolence card with the traditional black-edged envelope.
So all in all I stand by my early impressions of Catherine – brilliant, funny and unpretentious. What I didn't know then but is now apparent to even the most casual observer is how driven she is – incredibly ambitious, focused and hard-working.
Claire Baylis: I was in the Original Composition Course in 1995 with Catherine. It was an incredible cohort which also included Kate Camp, Alison Wong and Caren Wilton. I think the most remarkable thing is that she was already so much who she seems to be now – same trademark hair, same dry humour and a slight formality in her manner even as she wore her floral Doc Martens – but as an author too. She was one of the youngest on the course but approached writing with a surprising degree of maturity and dedication that was inspiring.
Catherine's father was ill and died that year from memory, and yet she was utterly disciplined in completing the portfolio. She was working on some of the early drafts of stories that later became part of In a Fishbone Church and she had already found her voice as a writer even though she was only in her mid-twenties. Even then, she wrote with wit, an ability to convincingly inhabit narrators so different from herself (look where that took her!) and remarkable images that honestly have remained with me for all those years – like the fishbone church and the impression of a butterfly on a girl's cheek from an embroidered pillowcase.
I know I learnt a lot from the depth and insight of her feedback and her trust in my potential, which was incredibly reassuring because it was obvious, even then, that she was going to be an astounding writer.
Fergus Barrowman: My examiner's report on the 1995 undergrad workshop collection of short stories In a Fishbone Church: 'If it can be maintained at this level I think it stands every chance of finding a publisher.' God I was boring. Still am. Full credit to Harry Ricketts, who examined it and wrote, 'I really enjoyed this sequence of linked stories and ended up wondering if they aren't, in fact, part of a novel.' As they turned out to be in the MA class in 1997.
Marie Duncan: I feel privileged to have been in the MA class with Catherine in 1997 and have always enjoyed our catchups over the years. Catherine was fun, good sense of humour. That amazing hair! She always spoke very warmly about her family and she was a very grounded person. She must have found our writings efforts quite trying but she was always encouraging.
She is still the same Catherine we knew in 1997 despite her successes. What a writer.
James Hollings: I was on the MA class with her in 1997. There definitely was something different about her. She seemed to operate on a whole different level. I remember at the time thinking that she already seemed to know she was going to be a published novelist.
I remember once asking her what she thought I should write about, and she took a day or two before coming back with a very considered, thoughtful, and helpful response. That was kind, and shows the kind of attention to detail she has.
At the time, she was writing In a Fishbone Church. It was well-advanced when she came onto the course. So there was a sense that she was just that much ahead of the rest of us – there didn't seem to be much doubt it was going to be published, and with VUP. There were some very good writers on that course – Laurence Fearnley, and Kapka Kassabova – but Catherine seemed to be next-level organised and determined, even above them.
She seemed to have a strong family behind her – her mum, especially, from memory. She just had this sense of purpose, almost destiny about herself – this is what she was going to do.
Laurence Fearnley: I was in the first intake of students for the MA in Creative Writing in 1997. We met in the English department, in the Von Zedlitz building. There were around 10 of us – all women except for James Hollings, who was working on fiction at the time (though he's better known for his nonfiction/ journalism). We were a mix of poets, short fiction, young adult fantasy, and novelists (though at that stage I'd only had a novella published). We were a very tight group, all very aware of the opportunity we had been given to work under Bill Manhire's mentorship.
As a result we took the year, and the work, very seriously. In many ways it was our first time of being able to think of ourselves, or speak of ourselves as writers. Of all the people in the group Kapka Kassabova was probably the most forceful, and sure of her place in terms of the writing community.
Catherine was writing In a Fishbone Church which she'd begun while doing an undergraduate creative writing paper so she was a bit further along than the rest of us, in terms of identifying and working on a project. She had a lot of part-time work in order to support herself. She'd sometimes arrive with blueberry muffins, which I think she brought from work.
For as long as I've known her, Catherine has been equal parts kind and determined. One of the first things that struck me about her writing was 'how' she worked. She approached her novel in a much more planned out, and structured way than me. I think she worked out her chapters in advance, so always had an idea of the direction her work would take. This gave her novel a strong foundation upon which she could play with. So, the base was solid but the top was fluid. It was the opposite to how I worked and it was really interesting to watch as the year progressed.
We were all equals in the class, so we gave and received feedback on one another's work in a proper workshop way. Catherine was no more or less vocal than anyone else. She was a careful reader and was very measured. I doubt she ever left a workshop wishing she had kept quiet or regretting some offhand remark. A lot of our real discussion took place outside class but although I remember spending a lot of time with Kapka, I didn't socialise with Catherine.
We met more, socially, once she moved to Dunedin. She invited Emma Neale and me to her house in Ravensbourne which was a kind of 'Goth-Deco' place, beautifully decorated with her collection of antique and vintage beaded purses. Our sons were with us and she put on the most amazing afternoon tea, almost a high-tea, with art deco table-wear and tiered cake stands. She was so attentive to everyone.
Another time I went with her and her boyfriend to see a documentary about Imelda Marcos' shoe collection. Her latest novel was The Transformation which I knew she had carefully researched and we talked about that. Her boyfriend was quite pompous and although supportive was kind of patronising and I thought Catherine wasn't appreciated for the talent she was/is. Fortunately, the relationship ended and I think her writing and personal life flourished afterwards, which is what she deserved.
Bill Manhire: Catherine Chidgey was a member of the inaugural MA cohort at Victoria University, so we were all learning what to do. Of course there were other gifted writers in the group – like Johanna Aitchison, Laurence Fearnley, Kapka Kassabova, Rae Varcoe – who would go on to publish terrific work, but we all knew as the weeks went by that Catherine was working at a level all her own.
Our job was simply to keep her company while she wrote her book.
The newly published The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38), dedicated to Bill Manhire, is available in bookstores nationwide. ReadingRoom is devoting all week to the book and the author. Monday: Chapter 1 of the new novel. Tomorrow: the author is interviewed by Steve Braunias on the craft of fiction.