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The Hewitson Profile: Catherine Chidgey on her creepy new novel

Michele Hewitson
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Contributing writer·New Zealand Listener·
11 mins to read


A very rude magpie may still be dogging her thoughts, but one of our most successful authors has managed another novel worth squawking about.

Catherine Chidgey (photographed above by Jane Ussher) is a very good writer. Everybody knows that. What is less well known about her is that she is also a talent wrangler and spruiker for, of all unlikely things, magpie-related merch.

Her 2022 book The Axeman’s Carnival, which is narrated by a talking magpie, Tama, won the

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