Eleanor Catton is about to sign a copy of her first novel, The rehearsal, at a session on emerging writers during the 2012 Writers' and Readers' Week in the New Zealand International Festival in Wellington. The following year Catton won the Man Booker prize for her second novel, The luminaries. Also in the photo are Hamish Clayton (middle), who had just published his first novel, Wulf, and Craig Cliff (right), whose first book of short stories was The mannequin makers. Both Catton and Cliff had studied at Victoria University of Wellington's International Institute of Modern Letters, while Clayton was also a graduate of the university. The institute has helped establish Wellington as a major centre for writing in the 2000s.