Paula Morris

Paula Morris (born 18 August 1965) is a novelist and short story writer from New Zealand.

Life

Morris was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. Her father is a New Zealander and her mother is English; the family's tribal affiliations are Ngāti Wai and Ngāti Whātua. She graduated from the University of Auckland in 1985 with a BA in English and history, and moved to the UK the same year. After completing a D. Phil at the University of York, under the supervision of Hermione Lee, and after a brief stint living in Manchester, she moved to London – working for BBC Radio 3 as a production assistant, Virgin Records as Press Officer for Virgin Classics, and PolyGram (now Universal) as Press and Promotions Manager for Philips.[1]

In 1994 Morris moved to New York to become Product Manager for the German record label ECM,[2] then distributed by BMG. During her four years at BMG Classics she rose to become Label Director of ECM and eventually Vice-President of Marketing for World Music and Jazz.[3]

Morris began taking fiction-writing classes at the West Side Y in 1997,[4] and started making her living from writing two years later, freelancing as a copywriter and promotions manager for The New York Times, writing encyclopaedia entries for Contemporary Black Biography,[5] and also working as a freelance branding consultant. In 2001 she moved back to New Zealand to join the MA in Creative Writing program at Victoria University of Wellington, where she was taught by Bill Manhire.[6]

From 2002–04 Morris attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship (2002–03)[7] and a Teaching-Writing Fellowship (2003–04),[8] graduating with an MFA. In the spring of 2003 she was also the University of Iowa International Program's Writer-in-Residence.[9]

From 2005–2010 Morris was Assistant Professor at Tulane University in New Orleans,[10] moving back to the UK in 2010 to teach at the University of Stirling in Scotland. At Stirling she was program director of the new MLitt in Creative Writing (Prose).[11]

From 2012-2014 she was Fiction Writer-in-Residence at the University of Sheffield.[12]

Her short story "False River" was shortlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story.[13][14]

Career

Morris's MA dissertation project at Victoria University won that year's Adam Foundation Prize[15] and became her first published novel, Queen of Beauty (Penguin New Zealand, 2002).[16] It won the NZSA Hubert Church Best Book of Fiction at the 2003 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.[17]

Many of the stories that formed Morris' dissertation project at Iowa, supervised by Marilynne Robinson, are collected in Forbidden Cities (Penguin New Zealand, 2008),[18] which was a finalist in the 2009 Commonwealth Prize SE Asia/Pacific region. At Iowa Morris also worked on two novels – Hibiscus Coast (Penguin New Zealand, 2005)[19] and Trendy But Casual (Penguin New Zealand, 2007)[20] – both of which she completed while living in New Orleans.

Her 2011 novel Rangatira[21] won best work of fiction at the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards.[22] The novel was serialised and broadcast by Radio New Zealand in 2012[23] and published in German that year by Walde + Graf.[24] It was longlisted for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.[25]

Morris has appeared at literary festivals and conferences in the US, China, New Zealand, the UK, Germany and Switzerland, and held a number of writer's residencies, including the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship in 2008.[26] During her tenure as a Sargeson fellow, Morris undertook two editorial projects: The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories (2008) [27] and an expatriate-writing issue of Landfall.[28]

She also wrote her first Young Adult novel, Ruined,[29] published in 2009 by Scholastic US. Morris followed this with another YA supernatural mystery, Dark Souls (2011)[30] and Unbroken (2013),[31] which is a sequel to Ruined.

In 2013 Morris published her first children's book, the second title in Puffin's New Zealand Girls series: Hene and the Burning Harbour.

During 2014 Morris was awarded two residencies, at the Brecht House in Denmark, and the Bellagio Foundation in Italy.[32]

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ About Paula « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  2. ↑ Billboard – Google Books
  3. ↑ books.google.co.uk/books?id=6w4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=paula+morris+bmg&source=bl&ots=JuVL0FB-6J&sig=duBN0-fowGmLkD14Lanto7GPIlQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZYMWUdPMMO-S0QXoxYCwAQ&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=paula morris bmg&f=false
  4. ↑ Interview with Paula Morris | Book Divas
  5. ↑ King Oliver Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about King Oliver
  6. ↑ Paula Morris interview – Book Club – Books – The Listener
  7. ↑ Prize Winners – International Institute of Modern Letters – Victoria University of Wellington
  8. ↑ New Zealand Book Council
  9. ↑ Writer-in-Residence To Speak April 21 – University News Service – The University of Iowa
  10. ↑ For novelist Paula Morris, the shadows in New Orleans history invite exploration | NOLA.com
  11. ↑ An Interview with Paula Morris | The Gothic Imagination
  12. ↑ Morris – Staff – English – The University of Sheffield She now teaches creative writing at the University of Auckland.
  13. ↑ "World's Richest Story Prize". The Sunday Times. 1 February 2015.
  14. ↑ "Yiyun Li is first woman to win The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award". BookTrust. 24 April 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
  15. ↑ Prize Winners – International Institute of Modern Letters – Victoria University of Wellington
  16. ↑ Queen Of Beauty « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  17. ↑ Montana New Zealand Book Awards – Literature – Christchurch City Libraries
  18. ↑ Forbidden Cities « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  19. ↑ Hibiscus Coast « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  20. ↑ Trendy But Casual « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  21. ↑ Rangatira « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  22. ↑ 2012 Awards | Booksellers New Zealand
  23. ↑ Radio New Zealand : National : Programmes : The Reading : Rangatira by Paula Morris
  24. ↑ Walde + Graf | Bucher | Rangatira
  25. ↑ Rangatira | International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
  26. ↑ Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship | Buddle Findlay – New Zealand Lawyers
  27. ↑ The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  28. ↑ landfall 217 Otago University Press, New Zealand
  29. ↑ Ruined « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  30. ↑ Dark Souls « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  31. ↑ Unbroken « Paula Morris, New Zealand Author
  32. ↑

External links