SUNDAY 17th JUNE

10.30

 

Laura will read from her third novel ‘Only Strange People go to Church. This witty, yet touching story, revolves round a community worker’s efforts to involve her disabled charges in a community show in a deconsecrated church.

Two earlier novels and her novel in progress will  also be

featured.

Laura will talk about how place, Scottish highlands and islands, Scottish industrial towns and Catalunyan industrial cities, influence her writing.

 

Laura says of herself, ‘Laura Marney is a nice person who tries to do a good deed every day. Occasionally bad deeds do slip in but there you go, nobody’s perfect.’

 

Laura first knew she was interested in writing when she won the class prize for an original short story entitled, The Gunslinger, when she was in primary three. Years later, while studying at Strathclyde University Laura became interested in theatre. After graduation she set up her own theatre company, and for five years wrote her own plays, directed, produced and performed with the company. The death of her business partner triggered a change of direction and for ten years she did managerial jobs before renewing her interest in creative writing.

 

After winning a place on the MLitt Creative Writing course she wrote her first book. ‘No Wonder I Take a Drink’. This reached No.2 in the Scottish bestseller list and resulted in a commission for two more books. She moved to Barcelona for a year to write Nobody Loves A Ginger Baby, then returned to Scotland to take up her post on Glasgow University’s MLitt Creative Writing course, a job she loves. She spends the summer months in Spain and completed Only Strange People Go To Church in 2006.

 

Barcelona has now become her home away from home. Laura tells a lovely story of how dreams can come true.

‘Years ago, when I was a student in Glasgow, I met my hero, Bernard McLaverty, and I told him how I wanted to move to Spain and make a living as a writer. Now, every writer starts out with some dream or other, and so few of them, no matter how good they might be, actually manage it. I think he’d probably heard that sort of patter before, but to his credit he wished me good luck and asked me to send him a postcard. So, a few years later, when I got a book deal and moved to Spain, I did.’

 

Besides short stories, reviews and articles for magazines and radio, Laura has written three novels and is currently working on a fourth. In addition to all this she finds the time to teach aerobics. This is something she enjoys and it provides the exercise she needs after a day at her desk.

 

Laura’s novels, all published by Black Swan, a division of Transworld Publishers are:

 

No Wonder I Take a Drink  (2004)

 

Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby  (2005)

 

Only Strange People Go To Church  (2006)

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LAURA MARNEY