Craig Marriner


Craig Marriner is a novelist from Rotorua, New Zealand. His 2001 novel Stonedogs won a Montana New Zealand Book Award and in 2003 the film rights were sold to Australian production company Mushroom Pictures, a film based on the book is currently in production. His second novel Southern Style was published in 2006. He is currently working on a third novel about a group of backpackers trekking through Europe during the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Early life

Marriner was born in Rotorua and has a "strictly working-class background", his father was a forestry worker before being made redundant. He left secondary school before completing his final year, describing himself as being "on the edge of the rails by then." He moved to the remote town of Mount Magnet, Western Australia with the intention of getting a mining job, and worked doing geological sampling. He subsequently spend four years working in Europe.

Writing

He describes himself as wanting to be seen as "a Kiwi art house youth culture-type writer." Influences on his work are George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S Thompson, as well as journalist Robert Fisk and Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky. His writing style has been compared to Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh.