Brilliance

Anthony McCarten was born in 1961 in New Zealand. He is a novelist, filmmaker and playwright. He worked as a reporter for a couple of years on The Taranaki Herald before studying for an Arts degree at Massey University and Victoria University of Wellington, where he studied creative writing. McCarten received early international success with his play Ladies Night. In 2001, it won France's premiere theatre award for comedy, the Molière Prize.

McCarten's first novel, Spinners was voted one of the top ten novels of 2000 by Esquire magazine. His third novel, Death Of A Superhero, won the 2008 Austrian Youth Literature Prize and was a finalist for the 2008 German Youth Literature Prize. The sequel novel to this story, "In The Absence Of Heroes" was published in 2012, and was a finalist for the 2013 New Zealand Fiction Prize and was Longlisted for the 2014 Dublin International IMPAC Literary Award. His fourth novel, Show Of Hands was made into a movie and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the New Zealand Film Awards.

In 2015 McCarten was made an Honorary Literary Fellows in the New Zealand Society of Authors' annual Waitangi Day Honours.

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