Dr Laura Fish is a writer of Caribbean heritage. Lying Perfectly Still (extracted in Johannesburg Review of Books, 2017) won S I Leeds Literary Prize Readers’ Choice 2022 and was SI Leeds Literary Prize listed 2018, 2020. Her second novel, Strange Music (London: Jonathan Cape 2008; Vintage 2009) was Orange Prize listed 2009; International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award nominated 2009; selected for Pearson Edexcel's Black British Writing A level reading guide 2017/18
Laura has over 10 years’ experience with BBC in broadcast television and radio in news, current affairs, features and light entertainment. She has been invited to read from and talk about her work internationally.
Selected Publications
Fiction
Lying Perfectly Still (extracted in Johannesburg Review of Books, 2017)
Angry Black Birds, short story (Kwani? Kenya, 2015)
Strange Music (London: Jonathan Cape 2008; Vintage 2009)
Flight of Black Swans (London: Duckworth 1995)
Selected Essays, Articles and Interviews
Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Contemporary Black British Women's Writing: Experiments in Literary Form, ed., Elisabeth Bekers, Helen Cousins, special issue interview (Volume 41, Number 2, Fall 2022) pp. 211-222 Project MUSE - Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature-Volume 41, Number 2, Fall 2022 (jhu.edu)
Fish, Laura; Pavey, Liz, ‘The Other Side of Me: Moving Words into Motion’, (Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, 2021) https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-adaptation-in-film-performance
Fish Out of Water: the Novel and the Senses (Al Araby Al Jadeed, London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper 2017)
'Woman in the Mirror: Reflections', Perspectives from the Radical Other, Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies (indexed in MLA International Bibliography List of Periodicals): http://synthesis.enl.uoa.gr/perspectives-from-the-radical-other-7-2015/laura-fish.html
‘Victorian Secrets’, Mslexia, Issue 38, (Mslexia Publications Limited: 2008)
‘Strange Music: Engaging Imaginatively with the Family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from a Creole and Black Woman’s Perspective’, Victorian Poetry, a bicentenary special issue on Elizabeth Barrett Browning (West Virginia University Press: 2006) 44(4), 507-524
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/victorian_poetry/v044/44.4fish.html
Fish L. ‘Black Fish in a White Sea’ and ‘Letter to My Self’ In: Harris, P, ed. In Search of Belonging: Reflections of Transracially Adopted People. British Association of Fostering and Adoption (London: BAAF, 2006) pp.203-205; 206-210.
Selected Academic Positions
Creative Writing Tutor: St Andrews University; University of Western Cape; University of East Anglia, where she attained the MA and PhD in Creative Writing; Newcastle University, RCUK Academic Fellow in Creative Writing.
Iowa International Writers’ Programme Fellow
This Is Who We Are UK/Australia Mentoring Programme: Reframing the Margins, intergenerational and intersectional women artists, producers and creatives of colour:
https://www.renaissanceone.co.uk/reframing-the-margins
British Council Writers’ Directory: Laura Fish - Literature (britishcouncil.org)
Selected Awards and Nominations
S I Leeds Literary Prize Readers’ Choice winner 2022; S I Leeds Literary Prize listed 2018; 2020
This Is Who We Are UK/Australia Mentoring Programme: Reframing the Margins 2022 intergenerational and intersectional women artists, producers and creatives of colour:
https://www.renaissanceone.co.uk/reframing-the-margins
Faculty Research Fund Award 2012
Arts Council Award 2020; 2009
Orange Prize Listed 2009
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award nominated 2009
Creative Arts East Anguish’s Educational Foundation, Norwich through, Norfolk 2006
Society of Women Writers and Journalists Award 2001
Seth Donaldson Memorial Award School of English and American Studies, UEA 2000
Society of Authors Award 2000
British Council “Women Achievers” promoting women’s in Britain and South Africa 1999
Society of Authors Grant 1997
Race in the Media Awards Producer/Director/Researcher, BBC documentary listed by Commission for Racial Equality 1992
Recent invitations include
Guest speaker, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Brussels University weKONEKT week 2023
Oxford University, Department for Continuing Education 'The Nineteenth Century Slave Narrative' 2023
Guest lecturer, University of Zurich 2021
Invited speaker, Elizabeth Barret Browning and Place, with Cora Caplan and Simon Avery, Ledbury Poetry Festival 2019 https://www.poetry-festival.co.uk/?s=browning
Edinburgh University research seminar 2018
BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Jenni Murray DBE, interview 50th anniversary of Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea 2016
Fellowships and Contributions to Professional Organisations
Programme Leader, MA in Creative Writing, Northumbria University 2017 – 2022
Fellow of Higher Education Academy 2015
External Examiner Imperial College, London, M.A in Creative Writing undergraduate programme 2012 – 2015
Member of Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA) 2009 - 2014
Seven Stories National Centre for Children's Books, Judge for The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award shortlist 2013
Freedom from Torture Residential weekend for Amnesty International Writing competition at Edinburgh Festival working with victims of torture 2012
Writer-in-Residence Deerbolt Young Offenders Unit, March-August 2012
Iowa International Writing Program, Iowa University, USA 2010
Writing Together Mentor to secondary school teachers, UEA Department of Continuing Education initiative 2007
Selected by the British Council to promote the work of women in Britain and South Africa 1999
Hawthornden Castle, Writer’s Fellowship, Edinburgh, Scotland 1998
Selected Conference Papers
‘Turning Anger into Art: Confessions of a Black Woman Writer’ Common Threads: Black and Asian British Women’s Writing University of Brighton 2022
‘The Other Side of Me: Art in the Anthropocene’ jointly written paper Dr Laura Fish and Liz Pavey at international conference ‘Art in the Anthropocene’, Trinity College, Dublin, 2019
Georgia Radio interview with Salome Asatiani on Jean Rhys and Wide Sargasso Sea, Feb, 2019
https://www.radiotavisupleba.ge/a/29759883.html
Durham University Guest Speaker at a Trevelyan College postgraduate Literature students 2012
Newcastle University Conference paper: The Black Woman in the Mirror, “Echoes of the Past: Woman, History and Memory in Fiction and Film”, U.K 2009
Chawton House Library “Imagining Transatlantic Slavery and Abolition,” an International Conference to mark the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain and the United States 2007
University of North Carolina “This Is Living Art,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the 21st Century: An International Bicentenary Conference and Celebration,
Baylor University, Texas, 2006; Victorian Institute’s Conference “The Nine Lives of Victorian Poetry,” 2005
Selected Lectures and Public Readings
Ledbury Poetry Festival 2019. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Place: a one-day event.
Goldsmiths University, George Wood Theatre, new MA in Black British Writing, Centre for Caribbean Studies 2015
Newcastle University ‘Landscape, Wilderness and the Wild’, presentation at cross-disciplinary Ph.D. workshop on creative research methodologies 2015
Newcastle University Andrea Levy’s The Long Song 2011
Oxford Literary Festival 2010
Prairie Lights Bookstore Iowa City 2010
Iowa City Public Library panel discussion, A Sense of Place 2010
Iowa State Television interview 2010
Iowa University Contributed to International Literature Today Course 2010
Wordstock Literary Festival Oregon; working with homeless; inner-city teenagers; public lectures
Wellesley College, Boston, USA Lecture on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and reading 2010
BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour, Jenni Murray DBE, interview, July 2008
Calabash Literary Festival Treasure Beach, Jamaica 2009
BBC World Service 2009
Durham University Toni Morrison: New Directions Symposium 2009
Liverpool Literary Festival 2008
Manchester Literary Festival 2008
Arvon Foundation Centres Scotland and Devon 2001
Cape Town Festival South Africa 1999
British Council “Women Achievers” conference, Cape Town; promoting the work of women in Britain and South Africa 1999
Universities of Estonia Tallinn, 1997
University of St. Andrews 1998
Public Engagement
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Interview on Wide Sargasso Sea with Salome Asatiani Correspondent, Georgian Service, 2019
BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Jenni Murray DBE, interview on 50th anniversary of Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea Sept. 2016
Visiting Writer status obtained for Billy Kahora, Kenyan-based writer, film maker, prose fiction and script writer and editor of Kwani? African literary journal Oct-Nov 2014
Visiting Fellow/Researcher status obtained for Dr. Maude Dikobe, Lecturer in the Expressive Arts of Africa and the African Diaspora, University of Botswana, Oct-Dec 2013
Aminatta Forna: Literature and Human Rights - A Critical Examination chair of symposium panel, Newcastle University 2013
Site and Sight: Ingrid Pollard Visiting Lecturer Series, Newcastle University 2012
Internal Examiner for PhD viva in Creative and Critical Writing, Newcastle University 2011
Prof Marjorie Stone Visiting Lecturer Series, Launch of Volume 5 Pickering and Chatto Elizabeth Barrett Browning edition, Newcastle 2010
Even Better Writers New Writing North and Newcastle City Council pilot course to support and enhance creative writing teaching and creative practice in secondary schools 2008
Fictionalising Historical Events Spring School open to public, Newcastle University 2008
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Seminar ‘The Browning’s’, Newcastle University 2008
Further Information
Lying Perfectly Still is set in Eswatini, the small landlocked Southern African country formerly known as The Kingdom of Swaziland. It is an exploration of identity and belonging, grief and connection, privilege, and abuse. The three issues at the heart of the book are the value placed upon black lives, violence against and exploitation of young women, and a global pandemic - HIV/AIDS. The story focuses on aid workers who trade charity for sexual favours.
Having lived and worked in Southern Africa as a researcher for Save The Children Fund in Sudan, and a Network Africa/BBC World Service reporter in Eswatini and Mozambique in the 1990s, Laura has experience of these aid and developmental concerns.
https://www.sileedsliteraryprize.com/2022-awards-ceremony/
Strange Music offers a fictional exploration of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s family from the Creole and black slave woman's perspective. It is set in both England and Jamaica in the late 1830s.
Flight of Black Swans is set in Aboriginal Australia and received very favourable reviews.
Postcolonial writings and rewritings
My research interests include narratives of cultural difference, black literature and literary criticism, the politics of marginalisation, the writers’ ethical responsibilities, issues of gender, the constructs of difference and otherness, and retrieving and rewriting hidden stories and histories. Literature and writing are central to my life and work. My research engages with dialogues across different cultures and geographies. The main themes in my publications cover gender, ethnicity, identity, displacement.
Lying Perfectly Still is set in Eswatini, the small landlocked Southern African country formerly known as The Kingdom of Swaziland. It is an exploration of identity and belonging, grief and connection, privilege, and abuse. The three issues at the heart of the book are the value placed upon black lives, violence against and exploitation of young women, and a global pandemic - HIV/AIDS. The story focuses on aid workers who trade charity for sexual favours.
Having lived and worked in Southern Africa as a researcher for Save The Children Fund in Sudan, and a Network Africa/BBC World Service reporter in Eswatini and Mozambique in the 1990s, Laura has experience of these aid and developmental concerns.
https://www.sileedsliteraryprize.com/2022-awards-ceremony/
Strange Music offers a fictional exploration of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s family from the Creole and black slave woman's perspective. It is set in both England and Jamaica in the late 1830s.
Flight of Black Swans is set in Aboriginal Australia and received very favourable reviews.
Selected Academic Positions
Creative Writing Tutor: St Andrews University; University of Western Cape; University of East Anglia, where she attained the MA and PhD in Creative Writing; Newcastle University, RCUK Academic Fellow in Creative Writing.
Fellow of Iowa International Writers’ Programme
This Is Who We Are UK/Australia Mentoring Programme: Reframing the Margins, intergenerational and intersectional women artists, producers and creatives of colour:
https://www.renaissanceone.co.uk/reframing-the-margins
British Council Writers’ Directory: Laura Fish - Literature (britishcouncil.org)
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