Laurence Fearnley

Laurence Fearnley is a short story writer, novelist and non-fiction writer. Several of her books have been shortlisted for or have won awards, both in New Zealand and overseas, including The Hut Builder, which won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. She has also been the recipient of a number of writing awards and residencies including the Robert Burns Fellowship, the Janet Frame Memorial Award and the Artists to Antarctica Programme. She lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Laurence Fearnley
Born1963
Occupationwriter
Alma materVictoria University of Wellington
Notable awardsRobert Burns Fellowship

Biography

Laurence Fearnley (Jura Fearnley) was born in 1963.[1] She grew up in Christchurch, travelled to Europe and later lived in Wellington where she worked as a curator in art galleries and museums before moving to Dunedin.[2][3]

She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing (2012) from Victoria University of Wellington.[1] For her thesis, she looked at accounts of the first attempts to climb Aoraki/Mount Cook.[4]

Her books, including her trilogy Butler's Ringlet, Edwin and Matilda and Mother's Day, have a strong sense of landscape and are often set in small towns of Southland and Central Otago in southern New Zealand.[3] Her short stories have been broadcast on the radio and published in anthologies and in literary journals, including Sport and Landfall.[1]

She is married with one son and lives in Dunedin.[4]

Awards and Prizes 

Fearnley has received a number of awards and grants for her writing and several of her books have been shortlisted for or have won awards. Room was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Edwin and Matilda was longlisted for the Dublin Prize in 2008[5] and was also runner-up in the fiction category of the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards[6] and was shortlisted for the 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.[7] Going Up is Easy was a finalist in the 2015 Banff Mountain Literature Award.[8] Reach was longlisted for the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.[9][1]

Fearnley has been twice to Antarctica, first as an Arts Fellow under the Artists to Antarctica Programme in January 2004[10] (her book Degrees of Separation draws on this experience) and again as a tutor with students of the Graduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies from the University of Canterbury in December 2005.[11] She spent a month in 2006 at the Island of Residencies fellowship in Tasmania[12][3] and held the Robert Burns Fellowship in 2007.[13]

In 2014, she  took part in Roadwords,[14] a literary tour of southern South Island towns, with three other writers: Pip Adam, Tina Makereti and Lawrence Patchett, who met each other when they were all studying for PhDs at Victoria University.[15][16]  

In 2016 she received the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award,[17] the NZSA / Auckland Museum Research Grant[18] and the Friends of the Hocken Collections Award.[19]

She was joint winner of the 2017 Landfall Essay Competition for her essay 'Perfume Counter'.[20]

She has taken part in several literary festivals including the Nelson Arts Festival,[21] Tauranga Arts Festival[22][23] and Word Christchurch 2018.[24][25]

Bibliography 
  • The Sound of Her Body (Hazard Press, 1998)
  • Room (Victoria University Press, 2000)
  • Delphine’s Run (Penguin, 2003)
  • Butler's Ringlet (Penguin, 2004)
  • Degrees of Separation (Penguin, 2006)
  • Edwin and Matilda (Penguin, 2007)
  • Mother's Day (Penguin New Zealand, 2009)[26]
  • The Hut Builder (Penguin, 2010)[27]
  • Going Up is Easy by Lydia Bradey with Laurence Fearnley (Penguin, 2015)[28]  
  • Reach (Penguin, 2014)[29]
  • The Quiet Spectacular (Penguin, 2016)[30]
  • To the Mountains: A collection of New Zealand alpine writing selected by Laurence Fearnley and Paul Hersey (Otago University Press, 2018)[31]

References
  1. "Fearnley, Laurence". New Zealand Book Council: Te Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa. November 2016. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  2. Gilchrist, Shane (29 September 2014). "Rocky relations". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  3. Smith, Charmian (9 May 2009). "Writer draws on small NZ towns for inspiration". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  4. "Laurence Fearnley". Victoria University of Wellington: International Institute of Modern Letters. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  5. Irvine, Lindesay (12 November 2008). "147 authors fight it out for the Impac Dublin prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  6. "New Zealand Post Book Awards". Christchurch City Libraries. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  7. Ryan, Mick (17 September 2010). "Boardman Tasker Prize - The 2010 Shortlist". UKClimbing. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  8. "Banff Mountain Book Competition Announces Winners". Rock and Ice. 9 November 2015. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  9. "New Zealand's Book Awards Announce First-Ever Longlist". Creative NZ. 26 November 2015. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  10. "Previous Artists & Media in Antarctica". Antarctica New Zealand. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  11. "Prose: Laurence Fearnley: Antarctica – Looking Back". Flash Frontier: an adventure in short fiction. 31 December 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  12. "Otago Announces 2007 Arts Fellowships". The Big Idea. 17 November 2006. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  13. "Laurence Fearnley – 2007". University of Otago: Nourishing the Roots. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  14. "About the Authors". Roadwords: A literary tour of southern NZ towns. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  15. "Roadwords: A literary tour of southern towns by four award winning writers". Creative NZ. 5 August 2014. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  16. "Bringing literature to smaller towns". Otago Daily Times. 7 August 2014. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  17. "Laurence Fearnley wins Janet Frame Memorial Award 2016". NZSA The New Zealand Society of Authors (Pen NZ Inc) Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa. 18 November 2016. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  18. "Laurence Fearnley ( 2017)". Michael King Writers Centre. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  19. "Friends of the Hocken Collections Award". Friends of the Hocken Collections. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  20. "Landfall Essay Competition winners share prize for radically different topics". Booksellers NZ. 6 November 2017. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  21. Ritchie, Judith (21 September 2016). "Acclaimed authors share thoughts on writing". Stuff. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  22. "Scents of a Landscape". Tauranga Arts Festival. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  23. "Beyond the Visual". Tauranga Arts Festival. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  24. "To the Mountains: WORD Christchurch Festival 2018". Christchurch City Libraries. 3 September 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  25. "To The Mountains". WORD Christchurch. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  26. Barry, Rebecca (5 May 2009). "A surprising glimmer of hope". New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  27. Harvey, Siobhan (16 July 2011). "Laurence Fearnley interview". NZ Listener. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  28. Lightbourne, Amie (29 January 2016). "Book Review: Going Up is Easy, by Lydia Bradey, with Laurence Fearnley". Booksellers NZ. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  29. "Reach". Radio New Zealand. 12 October 2014. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  30. "Laurence Fearnley's new novel The Quiet Spectacular". Radio New Zealand. 3 July 2016. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  31. "Alpine inspiration: Laurence Fearnley & Paul Hersey". Radio New Zealand. 31 May 2018. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  • Biography at New Zealand Book Council: Te Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa
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