Kim Westwood

Kim Westwood is an Australian author born in Sydney and currently living in Canberra, the Australian Capital Territory.

Kim Westwood

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 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), was selected for the Honour List of the 2011 James Tiptree, Jr. Award,^[6] and won an Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel^[7] as well as a Ditmar Award for Best Novel (Ditmar Award results). It has been reviewed as "a disturbingly credible and darkly noir post-cyberpunk tale"^[8] with a "brilliantly evoked atmosphere of secrecy and threat"^[9] carried by a "strong, empathetic central character [and] fast paced narrative".^[10]

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.”^[11] 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.”^[12]

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 Fellowship (2004)

Awards and nominations

Award

• 2002 Aurealis Award, Horror Short Story: ‘The Oracle’
• 2011 Scarlet Stiletto Awards Judges' Prize: 'Trouble in Nine Acts'
• 2011 Aurealis Award, Best Science Fiction Novel, The Courier's New Bicycle
• 2012 Ditmar Award, Best Novel, The Courier's New Bicycle

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
• 2011 James Tiptree, Jnr. Award: The Courier's New Bicycle

References

1. Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2002
2. Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2005, 2008
3. The Book Show, ABC Radio National, June 2007
4. Terra Incognita: the Australian Speculative Fiction podcast site, March 2009
5. Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2008
6. http://tiptree.org/award/2011-james-tiptree-award/honor-list
7. Aurealis Awards winners archive, 2011
8. Australian Bookseller+Publisher, July 2011
9. Sydney Morning Herald, 27/8/2011
10. The Canberra Times, 3/9/2011
11. Australian Speculative Fiction: A Genre Overview, Donna Maree Hanson (2004)
12. Lucy Sussex, The Sunday Age, 2 November 2008

External links

• http://vanderworld.blogspot.com/2005/08/kim-westwood-another-australian-writer.html
• http://tiptree.org/award/2011-james-tiptree-award/honor-list