BIO
Dr. Laura Fish was an award-winning writer of Caribbean parentage. She was Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Northumbria University, and has held posts as a Creative Writing tutor at St Andrews University, the University of Western Cape and the University of East Anglia, where she studied for the MA and PhD in Creative Writing. For over 10 years, she worked in broadcast television and radio for the BBC. She read from and talked about her work internationally and was also a Fellow of the Iowa International Writers’ Programme.
Her research centered on dialogues between writers across different cultures and geographies, 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 were central to her life and work.
Her first novel, Flight of Black Swans (Duckworth, 1995) is set in Aboriginal Australia and received very favourable reviews. Fish has also contributed to the volume In Search of Belonging: Reflections of Transracially Adopted People (ed. Perlita Harris, 2006), an anthology commissioned by the British Association of Fostering and Adoption. In 2007 she obtained a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from East Anglia; her second novel, Strange Music (London: Jonathan Cape 2008; Vintage 2009), formed the creative component to her thesis. Strange Music is set in the 1830s in England and Jamaica and focuses on the family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the famous Victorian poet. The story was inspired by Barrett’s abolitionist poem ‘Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point’ (1850) and is retold from the perspective of the poet and of enslaved women on the Barrett's plantation in Jamaica. The novel was Orange Prize Listed 2009; Nominated for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009; and selected for Pearson Edexcel's Black British Writing A level reading guide 2017/18.
Her latest novel, Lying Perfectly Still (2024), is set is Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and won the S I Leeds Readers’ Choice 2022 and took third place in the S I Leeds Judges’ Award that same year. It is an exploration of identity and belonging, grief and connection, privilege, and abuse. At its heart are the value placed upon black lives; violence against and exploitation of young women; and a global pandemic - HIV/AIDS. The book shines a light on aid workers who trade charity for sexual favours. Having lived and worked in Southern Africa as a researcher for Save The Children Fund, and as a Network Africa/BBC World Service reporter in Eswatini and Mozambique in the 1990s, Fish possesses first-hand experience of these aid and developmental concerns. On 4 October 2024, shortly before the novel was due to be published, Fish passed away at age 60. The novel was published posthumously by Fly on the Wall Press, ensuring that Laura’s “voice of great literary quality, integrity and generosity” continues to resonate (editor Isabelle Kenyon, qtd. in Battersby).
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’, 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
CRE Race in the Media Award listed Producer/Director/Researcher, BBC documentary 1992
https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/laura-fish
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/f/laura-fish/
Bibliography
Adukwei Bulley, Victoria, Laura Fish, Lou Prendergast, and Bernardine Evaristo. “The Interrelatedness of Form and Content in Contemporary Black British Women’s Writing: Interviews with Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Laura Fish, Lou Prendergast, and Bernardine Evaristo.” By Elisabeth Bekers and Helen Cousins, Contemporary Black British Women's Writing, Special Issue of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 41, no. 2, Sept. 2022, pp. 327–42. Project Muse, doi.org/10.1353/tsw.2022.0023.
Avery, Simon. “Re-Reading Ebb: Trends in Elizabeth Barrett Browning Criticism.” The Journal of Browning Studies, vol. 1, 2010, pp. 5-13.
Battersby, Mathilda. "Publisher pays tribute to 'powerful and beautiful' author Dr Laura Fish who has died age 60." The Bookseller, 9 Oct. 2024, https://www.thebookseller.com/news/publisher-pays-tribute-to-powerful-and-beautiful-author-dr-laura-fish-who-has-died-age-60
Brophy, Sarah. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point’ and the Politics of Interpretation.” Victorian Poetry, vol. 36, no. 3, 1998, pp. 273–88.
Brown, Helen. “Helen Brown on a fictional portrait of Elisabeth Barret Browning." Rev. of Strange Music, by Laura Fish. The Telegraph, 9 Aug. 2008.
Fish, Laura. “Angry Black Birds.” In: Kwani?. Kwani Trust, 2015.
—. “’Black Fish in a White Sea’ and ‘Letter to My Self’.” In Search of Belonging: Reflections by Transracially Adopted People, edited by Perlita Harris, BAAF, 2006.
—. “Exclusive Excerpt from Lying Perfectly Still, a Work in Progress by Laura Fish.” Johannesburg Review of Books, 2017. johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2017/12/06/fiction-issue-exclusive-excerpt-from-lying-perfectly-still-a-work-in-progress-by-laura-fish/ .
—. Flight of Black Swans. Duckworth, 1995.
—. "‘Hearing Characters Speak Over Your Shoulder’: Laura Fish in Conversation on Writing as Practice-Based Research". By Patricia Da Costa and Katrijn Van den Bossche, Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings, vol.8, no.2, 2024.
—. “Laura Fish’s Swaziland blog.” Wordpress, 2009, https://laurafish.wordpress.com/.
—. “Letter to My Self.” In Search of Belonging: Reflections of Transracially Adopted People, edited by Perlita Harris, British Association of Fostering and Adoption, 2006,
—. Lying Perfectly Still. Fly on the Wall Press, 2024.
—. “Lying Perfectly Still.” Interview by Hana Sandhu. New Writing North, 19 Sept. 2024, https://newwritingnorth.com/journal/lying-perfectly-still-interview-with-laura-fish/.
—. Strange Music. Jonathan Cape, 2008.
—. Strange Music and The Black Woman in the Mirror: Reflections on a Literary History. 2006. University of East Anglia, PhD Dissertation. The British Library EthOS.
—. “’Strange Music’: Engaging Imaginatively with the Family of Elizabeth Barrett Browning from a Creole and Black Woman’s Perspective.” Victorian Poetry, vol. 44, no. 4, 2006, pp. 507–24.
—. “An Extract from Sunlight Through Bars.” Firsthand: The New Anthology of Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Centre for Creative and Performing Arts, 2001.
—. “Turning My Anger Into Art.” Inteview by Elisabeth Bekers, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and Helen Cousins. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 41, no. 2, Special Issue: Contemporary Black British Women’s Writing: Experiments in Literary Form, Sept. 2022, pp. 332-335. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1353/tsw.2022.0039.
—. "Victorian Secrets." Mslexia, 2008.
—. “Woman in the Mirror: Reflections.” Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies, no. 7, May 2015, pp. 92–105. doi.org/10.12681/syn.16199.
Fish, Laura, and Liz Pavey. "The Other Side of Me: Moving words into motion." Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, vol.14, no.1, 2021, pp. 109-23.
Garrido, Felipe Espinoza, Marlena Tronicke, and Julian Wacker. "Introduction: Blackness and Neo-Victorian Studies: Re-routing Imaginations of the Nineteenth Century." Black Neo-Victoriana, Brill, 2021, pp. 1-30.
Hayircil, Gülrenk. “Children of Horror in Laura Fish’s Strange Music.” Spanish Journal of English Studies, no. 43, Nov. 2022, pp. 289–307. revistas.uva.es, doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.43.2022.289-307.
—. "An Ecofeminist Approach: Unearthing Depths in Laura Fish's Strange Music and Bernardine Evaristo's Blonde Roots." International Journal of Language, vol. 47, Jan. 2023, pp. 392-400. DOI:10.29228/ijla.72108.
Heilmann, Ann, and Mark Lewellyn. “Voices Across Borders: Laura Fish's Strange Music (2008).” Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century 1999-2009, 2010. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.81-91.
Lowry, Elisabeth. “On the Shadow Side.” Rev. of Strange Music, by Laura Fish. The Times Literary Supplement, 5495, 2008, p. 19.
Novak, Julia. “The Notable Woman in Fiction: Novelistic Afterlives of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Biographical Fiction, special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 31.1, 2015, pp. 83-107, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2016.1092789.
Novak, Julia, and Sandra Mayer. "Disparate Images: Literary Heroism and the 'Work vs. Life' Topos in Contemporary Biofictions about Victorian Authors." Neo-Victorian Studies vol.7, no.1, 2014, pp. 25-51.
Oyeyemi, Helen. “Of Human Bondage: Helen Oyeyemi on Stories of Slavery that Refuse Tragedy.” Rev. of Strange Music by Laura Fish. The Guardian, 2 Aug. 2008, www.theguardian.com/books/2008/aug/02/fiction6.
Procter, James. “Laura Fish.” British Council Literature: Writers, 2008, https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writers/.
“Round-up: Fiction.” Rev. of Strange Music, by Laura Fish. The Scotsman, 26 July 2008.
Ramone, Jenni. "Strange Metaphors: Contemporary Black Writing in Britain." The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature, 2020, pp. 793-805.
St George’s Jesmond. “Tuesday 12th November 2024 Funeral of Laura Betton Rodber Laura Fish”. Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz6mIMdX5UA.
Stone, Marjorie. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Victorian Poetry, vol.46, no.3, 2008, pp. 313-15.
Stone, Marjorie, and Beverly Taylor. “’Confirm My Voice’: ‘My Sisters,’ Poetic Audiences, and the Published Voices of EBB.” Victorian Poetry, vol. 44, no. 4, 2006, pp. 391–404.
Stuart, Adrea. “The poet, the plantation and history’s lost lines.” Rev. of Strange Music by Laura Fish. The Independent, 8 Aug. 2008.
Tjon-A-Meeuw, Olivia. "The Daughters of Bertha Mason: Caribbean Madwomen in Laura Fish’s Strange Music." Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media, 2020, pp. 73-95.
Zullo, Federica. "Transatlantic Women Connections and Slave Stories: Strange Music, a Neo-Victorian Novel by Laura Fish”. (Post)colonial Passages. Incursions and Excursions across the Literatures and Cultures in English, Vol. 1, edited by Silvia Albertazzi et al., Scholars Publishing, 2018, pp. 176-90.
