Caroline Barron
Caroline’s debut novel, GOLDEN DAYS (Affirm Press Australia and via Hachette New Zealand), is on shelves 28 February 2023. Her memoir, RIPIRO BEACH (Bateman, New Zealand), won the 2020 New Zealand Heritage Literary Award for Best Non-fiction Book.
She holds a Masters in Creative Writing from University of Auckland (2015) plus a journalism degree and, in a previous life, owned and ran Nova—a leading model and talent agency.
Caroline is a Creative New Zealand funding assessor, creative writing teacher (webinars, live and Zoom classes, corporate workshops), presenter, and was a board member for the Michael King Writers Centre from 2017 to 2021, where she headed the residency selection committee. For seven months during 2022 she was contracted by Auckland Writers Festival | Waituhi o Tāmaki as Acting Marketing and Development Manager.
She has been a columnist for North & South and her work has been published by Landfall, Awa Wahine, Author, Three Lamps, Next, New Zealand Herald and more. As a book consultant and manuscript assessor (independently and for the New Zealand Society of Authors, of which she is a member) she has worked on more than 80 works of fiction and non-fiction. She has reviewed books for Kete and Otago Daily Times. She judges regional and international writing competitions, as well as grant and residency applications.
Caroline resides in Aotearoa, New Zealand, between Auckland and Northland’s Ripiro (Baylys) Beach, with her husband and two daughters.
www.affirmpress.com.au
Genre:
- Adult Fiction
- Adult Non-Fiction
- Autobiography / Memoir
- Flash Fiction
- Mind Body Spirit
- Non-Fiction
Skills:
- Competition Judging
- Editing
- Freelance Writing
- Long-Term Placement (schools, universities)
- Manuscript Assessment
- Novelist
- Print Media Writing (magazines/newspapers)
- Public Speaking
- Readings (adults)
- Research
- Reviews
- Short Story Writing
- Tutoring
Branch:
Auckland
Location:
Auckland and Northland
Publications:
Ripiro Beach: A Memoir of Life After Near Death (Bateman, 2020)
Winner of the 2020 New Zealand Heritage Literary Award for Best Non-fiction Book.
Emerging from a near-death experience a changed woman, Caroline spends the next six years poring over her family history in an attempt to make sense of her inexplicable rage. The family secrets she unearths threaten to destabilise her identity and carefully built life, eventually leading her to Northland’s rugged Ripiro Beach, where past and present dramatically collide.
Thanks Mum (Penguin, 2016)
'Our Love'—a poem by Caroline Barron—opens this anthology of Aotearoa writing about mothers.
Published by Penguin Books NZ, 2016.
Golden Days (Affirm Press, 2023)
Becky thought she’d left Zoe Golden and that summer far behind.
Set in 1995 against the backdrop of Auckland’s burgeoning party scene, Golden Days is the story of an intense late-teens friendship between bookish Becky and star-dusted Zoe Golden, and what happened when one terrifying night changed their lives and destroyed their friendship forever.
After finding out that her husband has been cheating on her, Becky is mourning the end of her picture-perfect marriage at the bottom of a bottle. She thought she’d left that summer far behind, but the trauma of her present day brings back memories of that one horrific night back in 1996. With Zoe’s reappearance, Becky is forced to reconsider her interpretation of events, as well as where blame lies, her true nature and her place in the world.
Music, clubs, art, collaboration, spirituality, sex – Golden Days is a thrilling and nostalgic ride into the past, where nothing is as it seemed.