Christine Leunens was born in Hartford, Connecticut to an Italian mother and a Belgian father. As a teenager she moved to Paris, where she had a close relationship with her grand-father, Guillaume Leunens, the Flemish painter. During this time she became a print model and the face of Givenchy, Paco Rabanne, Nina Ricci, Pierre Balmain and Sonia Rykiel. Her TV ads include Mercedes Benz, Suzuki and House of Fraser. During these years travelling around Europe, Asia and Africa, Christine combined modelling, studying and writing. She holds a Master of Liberal Arts in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. Her Master's thesis, 'Henry James and the Late-Nineteenth Century Aristocracy under the Napoleonic Code: Madame de Vionnet and a Contextual Reading of The Ambassadors' won the Dean's Thesis Prize in the Humanities.
Primordial Soup was published by Dedalus Books in the UK in 1999, the debut novel well received in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Publishers Weekly and Scotland on Sunday. Caging Skies, was published by Random House, New Zealand in 2008 and received praise in the New Zealand Listener, NZ Women’s Weekly, El País, La Stampa, Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde. A play adaptation by Desiree Gezentzvey, directed by Andrew Foster, had is world premiere at the Circa Theatre, Wellington in 2017. Taika Waititi’s film adaptation, JoJo Rabbit, won the People's Choice Award at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and is scehduled for theatrical release by Fox Searchlight/Disney in October 2019 .The French translation of Caging Skies was nominated for the Prix Médicis Étranger and the Prix du Roman FNAC.
Christine and her family made New Zealand their home in 2006 while maintaining strong ties with Europe. In 2008 she received a Victoria University Doctoral Scholarship to work on her thesis ' Evolution of a Thorny Nature: Novels in English and the Mother-in-Law', for which she was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing in 2012. A Can of Sunshine received a grant from the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa and was selected as 'Best Books of the Year 2013' by the NZ Herald. Her novels have been translated into eighteen languages.
Christine currently lives with her family in Nelson, where she is a violinist in the Nelson Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Nelson Astronomy Society. She is currently completing a historical Franco-New Zealand novel, South of Memory.
Primordial Soup was published by Dedalus Books in the UK in 1999, the debut novel well received in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Publishers Weekly and Scotland on Sunday. Caging Skies, was published by Random House, New Zealand in 2008 and received praise in the New Zealand Listener, NZ Women’s Weekly, El País, La Stampa, Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Monde. A play adaptation by Desiree Gezentzvey, directed by Andrew Foster, had is world premiere at the Circa Theatre, Wellington in 2017. Taika Waititi’s film adaptation, JoJo Rabbit, won the People's Choice Award at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and is scehduled for theatrical release by Fox Searchlight/Disney in October 2019 .The French translation of Caging Skies was nominated for the Prix Médicis Étranger and the Prix du Roman FNAC.
Christine and her family made New Zealand their home in 2006 while maintaining strong ties with Europe. In 2008 she received a Victoria University Doctoral Scholarship to work on her thesis ' Evolution of a Thorny Nature: Novels in English and the Mother-in-Law', for which she was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing in 2012. A Can of Sunshine received a grant from the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa and was selected as 'Best Books of the Year 2013' by the NZ Herald. Her novels have been translated into eighteen languages.
Christine currently lives with her family in Nelson, where she is a violinist in the Nelson Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Nelson Astronomy Society. She is currently completing a historical Franco-New Zealand novel, South of Memory.
