Great outdoors celebrated by visiting writer

Novelist Laurence Fearnley, who won the fiction category at last year’s New Zealand Post Book Awards for The Hut Builder, a work celebrating the country’s wide open spaces, headlines the final Writers Read evenings for 2012.

The Dunedin writer, whose book was also shortlisted for the international 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain writing, will read from her work at Massey’s Wellington campus on Thursday September 13 and at the Palmerston North City Library the following night.

Mary McCallum, a creative writing tutor at Massey will chair the Wellington event. Ms McCallum was shortlisted for the 2008 Book Awards, the same year Laurence Fearnley was runner-up for her novel Edwin and Matilda. Ms Fearnley was also a finalist in 2001.

Aside from The Hut Builder, (inspired by Ms Fearnley’s stint as the 2004 Artists to Antarctica fellow), the evening could include her reading of excerpts from a memoir based around a love of camping and the South Island, Ms McCallum says.

“I’m really looking forward to talking to Laurence. She’s one of this country’s best fiction writers with an incredible work ethic, she keeps her head down – we don’t hear much from her when she’s writing. I think writers and readers alike will enjoy hearing this writer read her work and also what she has to say about where her fiction comes from and how she crafts it.”

Creative writing senior lecturer and short story writer Thom Conroy will chair the Palmerston North event. “Fearnley’s fiction has always struck me as quietly powerful,” he says. “ My honours students are also studying Fearnley’s The Hut Builder now and I think they’ll gain a lot from the opportunity to talk with her in person.”

Both events are organised by Massey’s School of English and Media Studies.
Writers Read is a free public event with wine and nibbles available after the reading in Wellington and preceding it in Palmerston North.

Writers Read: Laurence Fearnley

Wellington
6pm Thursday September 13 Theatre Laboratory, Room 5D14, Wallace St, Entrance A, Wellington campus, Massey University.

Palmerston North
6.30pm with reading at 7pm, Friday September 14, Palmerston North City Library.