Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson is one of sixty authors who attended The Press Christchurch Writers Festival from September 4th to 7th, 2008
Kate Atkinson 's first novel, Behind the scenes at the museum, won amongst other prizes the 1995 Whitbread book of the year award. She has also had both critical and commercial success with her “crime” series featuring private detective Jackson Brodie as well as publishing several other novels and short story collections.
Born in York, Atkinson went to university in Dundee, home of the pea buster and Dundee United FC. After failing to gain a PhD in American Literature, Atkinson worked as a teacher, legal assistant and home help.
York, Edinburgh, Dundee and the Kingdom of Fife have featured as locations in several of her novels. Her earlier titles such as Emotionally weird revolve around dysfunctional families and she uses magical realism techniques or a parody of them to further skew her tales. Some critics have labelled her work tragic-comedy while other consider she has innovated a whole new genre.
