Craig Marriner

Craig Marriner, now 30, was born and raised in Rotorua. He has been a goldminer in Australia, a security guard at English soccer stadiums and an MC at an Amsterdam comedy club.

His first novel, stonedogs (Vintage, Random House, New Zealand, 2001) achieved considerable critical success, winning the Deutz Medal in 2002. It explores the urban underbelly of New Zealand and is set against a chilling backdrop of gangs, drugs and murder and will be launched in Australia later in the year.

His second novel is set in London and centres around the Kiwi/Aussie scene there.

Craig will take up residence in July 2004. He says of the Fellowship: "The Fellowship will provide me the financial leeway and the domestic tranquillity to complete my third book in a much shorter timespan that would otherwise be the case."

Reviews of stonedogs:

"Told in a brutal and scathing prose which keeps women in their place and multinational corporations cringing, stonedogs is not for the easily offended. Marriner offers a chilling look at the seedy underbelly of New Zealand society, of blokes treading a fine line between idealism and anarchy, friendship and betrayal, misbehaviour and murder."
Helen Spiers, Dunedin Star, 7 February 2002

"Full of real Kiwi characters that are easy to relate to, and set in the pubs, bars, cars and forests, this is real New Zealand fiction. The tight narrative and building tension grabs us and throws us into the backseat as we career around corners on the edge of the seat, never knowing where the next twist might lead us."
Warren Smart, Daily News, 17 November 2001

"Marriner's Vegas is brilliantly real as is Auckland (the Smoke) and it's superb to read a book littered with Lion Red cans, clapped out Holdens and rich boys from the North Shore. The language is spot on, the cadences and utterances utterly familiar to anyone who has been in a suburban pub, or to a rugby match, or indeed any small town in New Zealand … a tender and intelligently written novel."
Evening Post 13, November 2001