Elizabeth Knox


Elizabeth Fiona Knox is a New Zealand writer. She has authored eleven novels, three autobiographical novellas, and a collection of essays. Her best known works are The Vintner's Luck, which won several awards, has been published in ten languages, and made into a film of the same name by Niki Caro. Knox is also known for a literary fantasy series for teen readers by the name of, The Dreamhunter Duet. Her most recent novels are Mortal Fire, published in 2013, which also won several awards, and Wake.

Background

Elizabeth and her two sisters were born and raised by atheist parents in a household where religion was often debated. They spent their childhood living in various small suburbs of Wellington, including Pomare, Wadestown, Waikanae and Paremata. She later published a trilogy of novels that were influenced by her childhood experiences of living near Wellington.
Knox had always enjoyed inventing stories as a child, but had difficulties with writing because she was slightly dyslexic. When she was eleven she created an oral narrative history with her younger sister Sara and its characters and plot evolved based on their input along with the input of their older sister, Mary, and their friend, Carol. It became an elaborate paracosm with many characters, intricate plot lines, and involvements. When she was sixteen, Knox's father overheard a discussion between her, her sisters, and Carol regarding the consequences of a secret treaty set in their imaginary world and remarked that he hoped they were writing this down. Following this, they all tried "writing stories about, letters between, and poems by their characters" and Knox enjoyed it so much that she decided she would like to be a writer.

Writing career

In 1983, when Knox was 24, she started a degree in English Literature at Victoria University of Wellington. A year later, she started work on After Z-Hour in Bill Manhire's Original Composition course at Victoria. The novel was inspired by a memory she had of when was eleven and fell from a walnut tree on ANZAC Day. While in the hospital she overheard a conversation between an older man and her father about Passchendaele and life on the Salient in 1917. Bill Manhire encouraged her to write her novel, and told her he would be more interested in seeing her complete it, than her degree. After Z-Hour was published in 1987 by Victoria University Press and Knox graduated from Victoria University of Wellington the same year. She was also awarded the ICI Young Writers Bursary award that year.
In 1988 Fergus Barrowman, Nigel Cox, Knox, and Damien Wilkins, with the help of Bill Manhire, Alan Preston and Andrew Mason, co-founded the literary journal Sport. Knox was one of its editors and has been a frequent contributor to the magazine.
She won the Victoria University of Wellington Writing Scholarship in 1997. Her novel The Vintner's Luck was published in 1998. It chronicles the life of a peasant winemaker, Sobran Jodeau, and his relationship with the fallen angel Xas, setting in 1808 Burgundy, France, and spans 55 years. The novel was inspired by what she saw in a feverish dream when she had pneumonia. The Vintner's Luck won Knox widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards and it also raised her profile within New Zealand and beyond.
After The Vintner's Luck Knox published , , and . Between 2005 and 2007 her first young adult series, The Dreamhunter Duet, was published. Described as a "Mansfield-meets-Mahy fantasy" and, once again, Knox was praised for her audacious imagination and ingeniously constructed tales.
In 2009 the film adaptation of The Vintner's Luck directed and co-written by Niki Caro was released. The film was almost universally panned at the 34th Annual Toronto International Film Festival. Knox was disappointed at the direction the movie took as she felt Niki Caro "took out what the book was actually about", referring to the romantic relationship between Sobran and Xas which was a core aspect of the novel. Her sister, Sara Knox, who is gay, was also upset about the film version. Knox's bad experience with the film made her pull out of a potential film contract with NZ filmmaker Jonathan King for her young adult fantasy series, the Dreamhunter Duet.
That same year, Knox published The Angel's Cut, a sequel to The Vintner's Luck. The story follows the tale of Xas after the events of the first book and is set in 1930's Hollywood. And in 2013 published Mortal Fire and Wake, her most recent works.
She also published a collection of non-fiction, The Love School: Personal Essays'', which in 2009 won a Montana Book Award for Biography.

Publications

Currently Knox lives in Kelburn, Wellington and is married to Fergus Barrowman, a publisher at Victoria University Press. They have a son, Jack Barrowman.