Ken Catran won the 2007 Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal. 'Ken Catran, known to young readers throughout New Zealand and Australia, joins a stellar list of Margaret Mahy Medal winners since 1991,' Storylines Trust chairperson, Dr Libby Limbrick, said. 'We are delighted that this major award coincides with his taking up his appointment as the University of Waikato's 2007 writer in residence.'

 

Ken is the acclaimed author of over 30 novels for Young Adults. As a television scriptwriter and novelist, Ken Catran is particularly noted for his Deepwater Black sci-fi trilogy and Solar Colonies trilogy. Television credits include many children's dramas and a dramatisation of his own novel Steel Riders as well as the script for the 1993 movie of Tessa Duder's novel Alex.

 

In the early 1990s, he switched to writing fiction, beginning a career as one of the most prolific and versatile novelists in New Zealand, with a particular interest in the impact of technology on human societies.

With a passion for history and science fiction, his works reflect human interest details and interested readers cannot help but want to learn more. Notable titles include his Deepwater series, with Deepwater Black being a finalist in 1993 New Zealand Best Teenage Fiction Award and Voyage with Jason, which won the 2001 New Zealand Post Senior Teen Fiction Award and the New Zealand Book of the Year Award in the same year. His crime novels Talking to Blue, Blue Murder and Blue Blood are true psychological thrillers. His Moran family novels explore the impact of war on individuals and families.

He lives with his wife Wendy, also a writer, in Waimate, outside Timaru. Since being awarded the Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato, Ken spent most of 2007 in Hamilton. During this time he was planning to work on a novel set during the Malayan Emergency of 1948-1956, which tells the story of a Chinese teenager fighting for the Communist guerrillas and a New Zealand soldier who lost his father at Singapore. The two young men are enemies but after a skirmish, they are forced to spend a night together and discover they have a lot in common. This planned new novel, titled Wood Dragon and Fire Rooster, is a crossover senior teen/adult novel and a new departure for Catran.

 

His awards include the 2001 New Zealand Post Book of the Year and Senior Fiction awards for Voyage with Jason and the 2004 Esther Glen Medal for Jacko Moran: Sniper. Other novels have regularly appeared in New Zealand Post and Esther Glen shortlists and on every Storylines Notable Books list from 2000 to 2008.

Bibliography:
Steel riders (TVNZ Publishing) 1987
Doomfire on venus (HarperCollins) 1993
Deepwater landing (HarperCollins) 1993
Deepwater black (HarperCollins) 1992
Space wolf (HarperCollins) 1994
Shadow of Phobos (HarperCollins) 1994
Ghosts of Triton (HarperCollins) 1994
Deepwater angels (HarperCollins) 1994
Focus and the death-ride (HarperCollins) 1994
Secret of Boomer Lake illustrated by John Tarlton (Harper Collins) 1994
Solar colonies (Hodder Children's Books) 1995
Neo's war (Hodder Headline Australia) 1995
Ice-stranger (HarperCollins) 1995
Dream-bite (Puffin Books) 1995
Onager (HarperCollins) 1996
Fire gods (Hodder Moa Beckett) 1997
Running dogs (HarperCollins) 1998
Golden prince (Lothian Books) 1999
Black Sister (Angus & Robertson) 1999
Voyage with Jason (Lothian Books) 2000
Talking to Blue (Lothian Books) 2000
Blue murder (Lothian Books) 2001
Taken at the flood (Random House) 2001
Road kill (Lothian Books) 2001
Mall rats (Random House) 2001
Fries (Lothian Books) 2002
Tomorrow the dark (Lothian Books) 2002
Letters from the coffin-trenches (Random House) 2002
Something weird about Mr Foster (Scholastic) 2002
Lin and the red stranger (Random House) 2003
Artists are crazy and other stories (Lothian Books) 2003
Bloody Liggie (University of Queensland Press) 2003
Jacko Moran : sniper (Lothian Books) 2003
Protus rising (University of Queensland Press) 2004
Robert Moran, Private (Lothian Books) 2004
More weird stuff about Mr Foster (Scholastic) 2004
Seal boy (Random House) 2004
Blue blood (Lothian Books) 2004
Odysseus (Lothian Books) 2005
Jimmy Moran, regular (Lothian Books) 2005
Black ships ablaze (Lothian Books) 2005
Sea of mutiny (Random House) 2005
Something wicked this way comes (Scholastic) 2005
Red leader down (Random House) 2006
Teresa Moran, soldier (Lothian Books) 2007
Monsters of Blood and Honour (Random House) 2007