Marilyn Duckworth | |
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| Born | Marilyn Rose Adcock (1935-11-10)10 November 1935 (age 89) Ōtāhuhu, New Zealand |
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| Notable awards | Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement (2016) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Relatives | Fleur Adcock (sister) |
Marilyn Rose DuckworthOBE (née Adcock; born 10 November 1935) is a New Zealand novelist, poet and short story writer. Since her first novel was published at the age of 23 in 1959, she has published fifteen novels, one novella, a collection of short stories and a collection of poetry. Many of her novels feature women with complex lives and relationships. She has also written for television and radio. Over the course of her career she has received a number of prestigious awards including the top prize for fiction at theNew Zealand Book Awards forDisorderly Conduct (1984) and aPrime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2016.
Duckworth was born in the suburb ofŌtāhuhu inAuckland, New Zealand.[1] Her family spent the years between 1939 and 1947 in England.[2][3] Her father Cyril Adcock was a psychologist and Esperantist,[4] her mother was the poet Irene Adcock,[5] and her sister was the poetFleur Adcock.[1]
She has had four husbands and has four daughters,[6] and during her life has had close personal friendships with other writers includingMaurice Shadbolt,Maurice Duggan andJames K. Baxter.[7]
Duckworth's first novel,A Gap in the Spectrum, was published in England when she was 23.[7][2] Both her first novel and her second,The Matchbox House (1960), were set in England.[1] Many of her novels focus on women juggling their domestic life and relationships, although some of her novels includingPulling Faces (1987) andLeather Wings (1995) feature male narrators.[1] AcademicTerry Sturm describes her female heroines as "earnestly engaged in a search for their own identities".[8]Kevin Ireland praised her novels for their wit and crisp dialogue; she is also known for her observational skills.[1]
Her third novel,A Barbarous Tongue (1963), won an award for achievement from the New Zealand Literary Fund,[1] and was followed byIn Over the Fence is Out (1969) which was set in both England and New Zealand and her first poetry collectionOther Lovers' Children (1975).[1] Around this time she wrote radio playsHome to Mother (1976) andFeet First (1981), radio adaptations of bothGap in the Spectrum andA Barbarous Tongue, television scriptThe Smiler and the Knife (1971) and several episodes of 1975–1983 seriesClose to Home.[1] In 1980 she received theKatherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship which enabled her to spend a year working inMenton, France.[7]
Duckworth did not publish another novel untilDisorderly Conduct in 1984.[1] Sturm describes this as beginning her "extremely prolific" second career.[9] This novel won the top prize for fiction at theNew Zealand Book Awards in 1985.[1] It is about a woman trying to manage relationships with several lovers and the demands of her children during the1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand.[1] It was followed byMarried Alive (1985) set in a future New Zealand afflicted by an epidemic, andRest for the Wicked (1986) involving a woman's volunteer work for a sleep research company and how that impacts on her family and relationships.[1]
Janet Wilson has said that Duckworth's best novels "have a New Zealand, specifically Wellington, suburban setting, and often foreground the personal saga against contemporary public events or themes".[1] She cites in particularPulling Faces (1987) andMessages from Harpo (1989); the latter involves three generations of women dealing with social and legal changes in 1980s New Zealand.[1] In the 1990s her novels includedUnlawful Entry (1992),Seeing Red (1993),Leather Wings (1995) andStudmuffin (1997); a number of these dealt with darker sexual themes such as incest.[1][10] In 1996 she editedCherries on a Plate: New Zealand Writers Talk About their Sisters; she and her sister Adcock also both contributed essays to this work.[1]
In 2000 she published her autobiography,Camping on the Faultline.[7] Her later novels includeSwallowing Diamonds (2003), about a young woman who has grown up inWainuiomata, andPlaying Friends (2007), about an older widowed woman who moves in with a friend and a pregnant teenager.[7] Her second poetry collection,The Chiming Blue, was published in 2017.[7]
In 2016 Duckworth received the 2016Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in fiction, which is awarded to an author with a distinguished body of work.[7] Duckworth said in response:[11]
I'd been cheerfully resigned to being nowhere in the attention span of the literary world. Suddenly it’s here upon me, which is great.
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