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Ceridwen Dovey (born 1980) is a South African and Australian author and social anthropologist. The winner of several awards, she is known for her first novel, Blood Kin (2007), and her 2014 short story collection, Only the Animals. In 2024 she published another collection of short stories, called Only the Astronauts.

Early years and education

Dovey was born in 1980 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and grew up between South Africa (mainly East London) and Australia. Her father received death threats because he taught black students, then illegal under the apartheid regime.

Dovey attended high school in Australia at North Sydney Girls High School, before going to the United States in 1999 to study at Harvard University as an undergraduate, where she completed a joint degree in Anthropology and Visual & Environmental Studies in 2003. During her time at Harvard, Dovey made documentaries that highlighted the relationships between farmers and rural labourers in post-apartheid South Africa. She made a documentary about wine farm labour relations in the Western Cape of South Africa, called Aftertaste, as part of her honours thesis in 2003.

In 2004 Dovey worked briefly for the television programme NOW with Bill Moyers at Channel Thirteen in New York City, before moving to South Africa to study creative writing at the University of Cape Town. She wrote her first novel, Blood Kin, as her thesis for an MA in creative writing under the supervision of poet Stephen Watson, then did her graduate studies in Social Anthropology at New York University.

Career

Dovey moved back to Sydney in 2010. From 2010 to 2015 she worked for the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney.

Dovey's first novel, Blood Kin was published by Atlantic Books (U.K.), Penguin (South Africa) and Penguin (Australia) in July 2007, and by Viking in North America in March 2008. It was published in 15 countries, including Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden. It was shortlisted in 2007 for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the U.K.'s John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for British/Commonwealth authors under the age of 35 and was shortlisted in 2008 for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Africa). It tells the story of a fictional military coup from the perspective of the overthrown leader's portraitist, chef, and barber. The novel is deliberately ambiguous in its setting.

Dovey's second book, Only the Animals is a collection of ten short stories about the souls of ten animals caught up in human conflicts over the last century. It won the inaugural 2014 Readings New Australian Writing Award and the People's Choice for Fiction Award (joint with Joan London's The Golden Age) at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, as well as the Queensland Literary Awards Steele Rudd Award for a short story collection.

Dovey's third novel, In the Garden of the Fugitives, was published in early 2018.

Writers on Writers: Ceridwen Dovey on J.M. Coetzee was published in October 2018 as part of Black Inc.'s Writers on Writers series.

Life After Truth is Dovey's fourth novel and was published in November 2020.

In 2024 she published a collection of short stories called Only the Astronauts.

Dovey writes non-fiction for various publications, including The New Yorker and The Monthly.

Personal life

Dovey's sister, Lindiwe Dovey, is Professor of Film and Screen Studies at SOAS University of London.

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (July 2022)

Books

• Blood kin. Atlantic Books. 2007.
• Only the Animals. Melbourne, Victoria Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin books. 2014. ISBN 978-1-926428-58-1.
• In the Garden of the Fugitives. Hamish Hamilton. 2018. ISBN 978-1-926428-59-8.
• JM Coetzee, in the Writers on Writers series. Black Inc. 2018.
• Inner Worlds, Outer Spaces. The Working Life of Others. 2019.
• Life After Truth. Hamish Hamilton. 2020. ISBN 978-1-76089-536-5.
• __ Bell, Eliza (2022). Mothertongues. ISBN 978-1-76104-355-0.
• Only the Astronauts. Hamish Hamilton. 2024. ISBN 978-1-76089-677-5.

Critical studies and reviews of Dovey's work

Life after truth

• Taylor. Josephine (January–February 2021). "The science of happiness : a presidential-term dream". Australian Book Review. 428: 41.

Awards and recognition

Dovey was a recipient of a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, an award of A$160,000 given to mid-career creatives and thought leaders.

• 2009: Named a 5 under 35 nominee by the National Book Foundation
• 2014: Inaugural winner, Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, for Only the Animals
• 2020: Winner, Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing, for her article, "True Grit", published in Wired

• 2020: Winner, Finkel Foundation Eureka Prize for Long-Form Science Journalism

References

1. ^ "Ceridwen Dovey". AustLit. The University of Queensland. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
2. ^ Potier, Beth (5 June 2003). "Ceridwen Dovey '03 films her native South Africa". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
3. "Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey - Reading Guide: 9781101202739 - PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
4. Romei, Stephen. "Burden of the beasts". The Australian. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
5. "Only the Animals". Reading Australia. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
6. "Clarke, Dovey among Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship recipients | Books+Publishing". 12 September 2019. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
7. Walsh, S. Kirk (31 August 2018). "'In the Garden of the Fugitives': A Literary Tale of Love and Obsession (Published 2018)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
8. "Review: On J.M. Coetzee by Ceridwen Dovey". ArtsHub Australia. 23 October 2018. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
9. "Life After Truth by Ceridwen Dovey review – lifestyles of the remarkably privileged". The Guardian. 12 November 2020. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
10. "Ceridwen Dovey". The New Yorker. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
11. "Ceridwen Dovey". The Monthly. 14 July 2014. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
12. "Professor Lindiwe Dovey | Staff | SOAS University of London". www.soas.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 July 2023.
13. Nicole Rudick, "Blood Kin" (review), Bookforum, February 2008. Retrieved 21 February 2008
14. "New Fiction, New Worlds", Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 21 February 2008
15. Catherine Taylor, "Languour management" (review of Blood Kin), The Guardian, 21 July 2007. Retrieved 21 February 2008
16. Review of Blood Kin, Litnet. Retrieved 21 February 2008
17. Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey, Book Review, Booklover Book Reviews - 6 February 2015
18. Rebecca Starford, "The Garden of the Fugitives review: Ceridwen Dovey's striking, intelligent novel" Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 8 April 2018
19. "Ceridwen Dovey on JM Coetzee". State Library Victoria. 4 October 2018. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
20. "Past Award Recipients". Sidney Myer Fund & The Myer Foundation. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
21. "Ceridwen Dovey". National Book Foundation. 11 December 2015. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
22. "Moondust could cloud our lunar ambitions". Wired. 20 May 2019. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
23. "Dovey wins 2020 Bragg Prize for Science Writing". Books+Publishing. 26 November 2020. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
24. "2020 Australian Museum Eureka Prize winners". The Australian Museum. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 9 December 2020.

External links

• The Ceridwen Dovey official shelf page on Book Southern Africa
• Ceridwen Dovey's website
• "Q & A with Ceridwen Dovey", Penguin Books Australia. 2014

• 1980 births
• 21st-century Australian novelists
• Australian women novelists
• South African women novelists
• South African novelists
• Living people
• Harvard College alumni
• University of Cape Town alumni
• People educated at North Sydney Girls High School
• 21st-century Australian women writers