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 Retreat 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), 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 Retreat Fellowship (2004)
Awards and nominations
Award
- 2002 Aurealis Award, Horror Short Story: ‘The Oracle’
- 2011 Scarlet Stiletto Awards Judges' Prize: 'Trouble in Nine Acts'
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
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
- ^ 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
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