Owen Marshall is a novelist, short-story writer and poet, who has written or edited over twenty books to date. Awards for his fiction include the New Zealand Literary Fund Scholarship in Letters, fellowships at Otago and Canterbury universities and the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship in Menton, France. In 2000 he received the CNZM for services to literature and his novel Harlequin Rex won the Montana New Zealand Book Awards Deutz Medal for Fiction. In 2002 the University of Canterbury awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, and in 2005 appointed him an adjunct professor.