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Fiona McFarlane Fiona McFarlane i(A69636 works by)
Born: Established: 1978 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Fiona McFarlane was born in Sydney, and has an undergradiate in English from Sydney University, a PhD on nostalgia in American fiction from Cambridge University, and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a Michener Fellow.

Her work has been published in Zoetrope: All-Story, Southerly, the Best Australian Stories, and the New Yorker, and she has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter Academy and the Australia Council for the Arts.

The Night Guest, her debut novel, has been translated into twelve languages and sold into territories around the world. She followed it with a collection of short stories, The High Places. Her works have won a wide range of awards, including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Queensland Literary Awards, the Voss Literary Prize, the Barbara Jefferis Award, and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

As of 2018, McFarlane is based in Sydney.

Exhibitions

Most Referenced Works

On the Web

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Sun Walks Down Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2022 24978415 2022 single work novel historical fiction

'In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets. Six-year-old Denny Wallace has gone missing during a dust storm, and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - explore their own relationships with the complex landscape unsettling history of the Flinders Ranges.

'The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings and terrors. It's haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day that Denny could be found, or lost forever.'  (Publication summary)

2024 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
2023 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction
2023 longlisted HNSA Historical Novel Prize Adult
2023 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book Award
2023 longlisted Davitt Award Best Adult Crime Novel
2023 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
2023 shortlisted The Age Book of the Year Award Book of the Year
2023 shortlisted The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
2023 longlisted Indie Awards Fiction
y separately published work icon The High Places London : Hodder and Stoughton , 2016 9172969 2016 selected work short story

'The stories in this enthralling collection find those moments - and places - when life seems to do an about-face. The revelations of intimidating old friends on holiday, an accident on a dark country road, a lottery win and a lesson in the real nature of luck, the sudden arrival of American parachutists in a country town . . . here people are jolted into seeing themselves and their lives from a fresh and often disconcerting perspective.

'Ranging around the world from a remote Pacific island to the tourist haunts of Greece and written with great emotional insight, extraordinary invention and wry humour, each of these stories is as rich and rewarding as literature can be.' (Publication summary)

2018 winner Kibble Literary Awards Nita Kibble Literary Award
2016 winner Dylan Thomas Prize
2017 longlisted ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal
2017 shortlisted The Stella Prize
2016 shortlisted Readings Prizes Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction
2016 joint winner Queensland Literary Awards University of Southern Queensland Australian Short Story Collection – Steele Rudd Award
y separately published work icon The Night Guest Melbourne : Penguin , 2013 6012414 2013 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

'The debut of a major Australian writer, The Night Guest is a mesmerising novel about trust, love, dependence, and the fear that the things you think you know may become the things you're least sure about.

One morning an elderly widow called Ruth wakes thinking a tiger has been in her seaside house. Later that day a formidable woman called Frida arrives, looking as if she's blown in from the sea, but who has in fact come to care for Ruth.

Frida and the tiger: both are here to stay, and neither is what they seem. How far can Ruth trust them? And as memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency, how far can she trust herself?

The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane's hypnotic first novel, is no simple tale of a crime committed and a mystery solved. This is a tale that soars above its own suspense to tell us, with exceptional grace and beauty, about ageing, love, power and perception; about how the past can colonise the present, and about things (and people) in places they shouldn't be. Above all, it's a brilliantly involving story about two very particular women.' (Publisher's blurb)

2014 winner Voss Literary Prize
2014 shortlisted Readings Prizes Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction
2014 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction
2014 joint winner Barbara Jefferis Award With Sea Hearts.
2013 shortlisted Colin Roderick Award
2014 shortlisted Guardian First Book Award
2014 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
2014 shortlisted Kibble Literary Awards Nita May Dobbie Award
2014 joint winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing
2014 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
2014 shortlisted The Stella Prize
2014 shortlisted Indie Awards Debut Fiction
Last amended 6 Mar 2018 12:00:46
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