Portrait of Caroline Dawnay by Sarah Richardson Photo: Provided
Behind every successful writer there's likely to be a good literary agent - though if you're not in the business you probably don't know that. And for strong set of our top writers - including Eleanor Catton, Catherine Chidgey, Charlotte Grimshaw and Bill Manhire - that person doesn't even live in New Zealand. Her name is Caroline Dawnay, of the United Agency in London. She was awarded Literary Agent of the Year in the UK in 2014, has headed the association of literary agents and has been in the business since the 1970s.
And it’s not all books: Eleanor Catton's Luminaries is being turned into TV (Dawnay picked up Catton on the strength of her first novel The Rehearsal, so has been with her well before the Man Booker Prize) and a Charlotte Grimshaw novel is being turned into a TV series. Recently Dawnay led the acquisition by Lightning Books of the UK and Commonwealth rights for The Beat of the Pendulum by Catherine Chidgey.
