Laurence Fearnley
Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction writer. Her novel, The Hut Builder, won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. In 2014, Reach was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and, in 2008, Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the fiction category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2004, Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and, in 2007, the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. In 2016, she won the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award and, in 2017, she was the joint winner of the Landfall essay competition. She was named a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2019 and was artist in residence at Henderson House, Alexandra in 2024/25. Her most recent novel, At the Grand Glacier Hotel, was a shortlisted finalist in the 2025 Ockham Book Awards.
