Damien Wilkins has authored fourteen books. His latest, Delirious (2024), won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. Aspiring (2020) won the Young Adult Fiction Award, and his debut The Miserables (1993) won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. He received a Whiting Writers’ Award from the Whiting Foundation, New York (1992) and an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Award (2013). He’s a creative writing professor at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters Te Pūtahi Tui Auaha o Te Ao. As a musician and songwriter, he performs as the Close Readers.
Damien Wilkins has authored fourteen books. His latest, Delirious (2024), won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. Aspiring (2020) won the Young Adult Fiction Award, and his debut The Miserables (1993) won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. He received a Whiting Writers’ Award from the Whiting Foundation, New York (1992) and an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Award (2013). He’s a creative writing professor at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters Te Pūtahi Tui Auaha o Te Ao. As a musician and songwriter, he performs as the Close Readers.
