Dr Laura Fish
Lecturer in Creative Writing

Background

Laura has over a decade’s experience in broadcast television and radio, working for the BBC in news, current affairs, light entertainment and on documentaries. She has held posts as a Creative Writing tutor at St. Andrews University; the University of Western Cape, South Africa and the University of East Anglia.

Honours and Awards

Strange Music (2008), was listed for the 2009 Orange Prize, and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Research Interests

Postcolonial literature and rewritings, issues of gender, and American, African and black literature and literary criticism.

Current Work

My novel in progress is built upon my experience of living in Southern Africa.

Publications

Flight of Black Swans, (London: Duckworth, 1995)
Strange Music, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2008)

Essays and Articles

An extract from Sunlight Through Bars appears in the UEA Creative Writing Anthology, First Hand, (University of East Anglia, Norwich: CCPA, 2001) “Black Fish in a White Sea” and “Letter to My Self,” two articles for In Search of Belonging: Reflections of Transracially Adopted People, Perlita Harris (editor), an anthology commissioned by the British Association of Fostering and Adoption (BAAF: 2006) “Strange Music: Engaging Imaginatively with the Family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from a Creole and Black Woman’s Perspective,” Victorian Poetry, Stone, Marjorie; Taylor, Beverly (editors), (West Virginia University Press, 2006).

Grants, Awards and Scholarships

Society of Women Writers’ and Journalists Award (Jan 2001) Seth Donaldson Memorial Award, School of English and American Studies, UEA (Dec. 2000) Society of Authors Award for work on second novel, Sunlight through Bars (July 2000) Writer’s Fellowship, Hawthornden Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland (Oct 1998) Society of Authors Grant (July 1997) Producer/director/researcher of BBC documentary short-listed for the Commission for Racial Equality’s ‘Race in the Media Awards’ (1992).

Arts Council Award for research on current novel (August 2009).

Resident on the Iowa International Writing Program, University of Iowa, USA (August-November, 2010).