Carl Nixon
Carl Nixon (born 1967) is a New Zealand novelist, short‑story writer and playwright from Christchurch. He studied at St Andrew's College and earned a master’s degree in religious studies at the University of Canterbury in 1992, writing a thesis on funeral rites in a New Zealand prayer book. He briefly taught English before teaching in Japan for two years. In 1989 he helped found The Court Jesters, an improv troupe in Christchurch, and began writing for the stage, including children’s plays.
Nixon published a young adult novel, Guardians of Mother Earth (1996). He started writing for adults in 1997 and won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition with My Father Running with a Dead Boy; his story Weight won in 1999. He was runner-up in the 1999 Katherine Mansfield Short Story Competition and won its premier prize in 2007. His first short-story collection, Fish 'n' Chip Shop Song (2006), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2007.
As Ursula Bethell/Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury in 2007, Nixon completed Rocking Horse Road (2007), his first novel. It was followed by Settlers' Creek (2010) and The Virgin and the Whale (2013). He received the NZSA Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship in 2010–11. Some of his novels have been translated into German.
Nixon has written several original plays, including Mathew, Mark, Luke and Joanne; The Birthday Boy; and The Raft, which won Best Dramatic Production at the 2009 New Zealand Radio Awards. He has also adapted Lloyd Jones’ The Book of Fame and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace for the stage. In 2020 he won the McNaughton South Island Play Award for the best play by a South Island resident.
In 2017 he received the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship and spent time in Menton, France in 2018, finishing the first draft of his next novel, The Tally Stick, which was published in August 2020 to strong reviews. It was shortlisted for the 2021 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel. Nixon’s fifth novel, The Waters, appeared in August 2023 and collects 21 interlinked stories set in New Brighton; critics called it beautifully crafted.
Nixon lives in Christchurch with his wife and two children.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:31 (CET).