New Zealand Writers

MOREY, Kelly Ana

Descriptive writing that is both understated and evocative.

MOREY, Kelly Ana (1968-) is a novelist.

Kelly Ana Morey is of Pakeha and Ngati Kuri descent. She spent her early childhood in Papua New Guinea and later attended boarding school.

She completed two degrees at Auckland University, including the creative writing paper taught by Witi Ihimaera and Albert Wendt, before deciding against writing and becoming an art historian specialising in contemporary art.

During a two-year period of unemployment Morey returned to the far north and writing, producing her first novel, Bloom (Penguin Books, 2003). Writing for the online magazine book-club.co.nz, Liz Frazer describes the novel as ‘a hugely enjoyable read. Morey's writing is a wonderful combination of quirky one-liners and atmospheric prose. Her descriptive writing is understated but evocative.’ In a review in the Waikato Times, Beryl Fletcher writes, ‘I have no doubt that she [Morey] will become a powerful new voice in the current crop of young New Zealand writers.’

Morey’s second novel Grace is Gone was published by Penguin Books in 2004. When Cherry Sprite, the first born of Billy Flower's twelve girls, walks back into her home town of Meridian after a seventeen-year absence, no one, least of all her family, is in the faintest bit surprised. For as Billy is inclined to observe, 'Your kids come home when they're ready'.

Kelly Ana Morey currently lives in South Kaipara.

(LK)

Updated Information

Bloom received the New Zealand Society of Authors Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. The judging panel said it was "a wonderfully accomplished first novel that reads like the work of a veteran writer rather than a first book author".

Grace is Gone was one of five fiction finalists in the 2005 Kiriyama Prize, an annual award celebrating books from and about the Pacific Rim.

In 2005 Kelly Ana Morey was one of two recipients of the inaugural Janet Frame Literary Awards, worth $10,000 each.

On an Island, With Consequences Dire (Penguin, 2007) is Morey's fourth novel, a story of three friends and what happens when relationships turn sour.