New Zealand Writers

FEARNLEY, Laurence

A fiction writer and curator who has written extensively on New Zealand craft artists.

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FEARNLEY, Laurence (Jura Laurence Fearnley) (1963 - ) is a fiction writer and curator who has written extensively on New Zealand craft artists.

She graduated from Victoria University of Wellington in 1997 with an MA awarded with distinction in Creative Writing, and in the same year had a short story broadcast on National Radio.

Publication of a second short story in Sport was followed by the publication of a novel, The Sound of Her Body (1998). "Extraordinarily powerful..." writes Fiona Kidman. "[e]xquisitely realised... Exact, sparing, lovely."

In 2000 Fearnley received a New Work grant from Creative New Zealand and published a second novel, Room (2000), which was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

(KC.)

Updated Information

Laurence Fearnley was selected as an Antarctic Arts Fellow in the 2003 round of the Artists to Antarctica programme jointly sponsored by Antarctica New Zealand and Creative New Zealand.

delphine's run (2003) was written in response to Breton separatist activity whilst Fearnley was living in Europe. Delphine, in her early twenties, works as the food trolley girl on the Brest-Paris train. She becomes an unlikely collaborator, or, an innocent player in a series of shocking events...

Butler's Ringlet (Penguin Books, 2004) presents a realistic and often touching portrait of a provincial male world, seldom covered in recent New Zealand fiction. Black and white photos taken by the author appear throughout the book, painting a vivid picture of rural New Zealand life.

Degrees of Separation (2006) was written following Fearnley's Antarctic Fellowship. This novel focuses on themes of love and memory as three travellers return from a summer on the ice.

Fearnley is the 2007 Robert Burns Fellow. She will use her tenure to complete the final book in her trilogy of novels set in Southland and Central Otago. The book, set in Invercargill, will deal with issues of solo motherhood and poverty.