New Zealand Writers

QUIGLEY, Sarah

Intelligent and witty with strong characters who are utterly convincing.

QUIGLEY, Sarah (1967 - ) is a fiction writer and poet whose writing is characterised by pointed observation and sharp language play. She has won numerous awards for short fiction in New Zealand and the UK, and received a 1998 Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship.

Quigley's short fiction and poetry has appeared in anthologies (100 New Zealand Short Short Stories, Mutes and Earthquakes) and journals including Landfall, Poetry NZ, Takahe, NZ Listener, and New Writer UK.

Her first book was a collection of short stories, having words with you (1998). A novel, After Robert (1999) followed, and Quigley was one of three poets featured in AUP New Poets 1 (1999).

Stephen Stratford describes After Robert as "intelligent and witty with strong characters who are utterly convincing - even the young men are sympathetic and interesting, which is not always the case in real life."

Sarah Quigley is also a non-fiction writer and reviewer. She was shortlisted in the Reviewer of the Year category of the 1999 and 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

Sarah Quigley was awarded the inaugural Berlin Writers' Residency in 2000.

(KC.)

Updated Information

Sarah Quigley and Nick Ascroft shared the 2003 Robert Burns Fellowship.

Love in a Bookstore or Your Money Back (2003) is described as ‘the cool, contemporary voice of a young woman who travels, falls in love, writes.

Shot (2003). Meet Lena, daughter of Polish immigrants, professional funny woman. Lena is leaving it all behind - she heads for Alaska where she meets a mysterious tracker and a speechless child, and discovers that loss can sometimes be gain.

Quigley's latest novel is Fifty Days (Virago Press, 2004). In the middle of a city, in a deserted apartment block, a woman is living alone. She has 50 days to complete her self-imposed task. Her only contact with the outside world is through the Candy Girl, a singer with a mysterious connection to her past. Yet, day by day, self-containment becomes less possible.

Write: A 30 Day Guide to Creative Writing (2006), was published by Penguin Books.

Quigley had a poem included in Shards of Silver (Steele Roberts, 2006), a book investigating the interplay between photography and poetry.