Luminaries setting gets Catton visit

Eleanor Catton in front of the cameras on the beach at Hokitika during her fundraising visit.

Award-winning author Eleanor Catton spent yesterday in Hokitika, the setting of her critically acclaimed novel The Luminaries.

She was in the former mining town to take part in a question-and-answer session alongside British publisher Max Porter at the Regent Theatre. The event was a fundraiser for the theatre.

Her publisher, Fergus Barrowman, posted the image, with others of the Man Booker Prize winner, on the West Coast with publicist Kirsten McDougall and Wellington writer Elizabeth Knox.

Plans are already under way for a TV series based on The Luminaries, which is also long-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, formerly the Orange Prize.