Diane Brown is a novelist, memoirist, and poet who runs Creative Writing Dunedin, teaching fiction, memoir and poetry. She is the author of eight books, including Before the Divorce We Go To Disneyland (Tandem Press, 1997), winner of the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry, Learning to Lie Together (Godwit, 2004), and Eight Stages of Grace (Vintage, 2002), a verse novel which was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards 2003. She has also published a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers (Vintage, 2004), and three further poetic narratives: Here Comes Another Vital Moment (Godwit, 2006), Taking My Mother To The Opera (Otago University Press, 2015), and most recently the poetic novella Every Now and Then I Have Another Child (Otago University Press, 2020).
She has held the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship and has had two residencies at the Michael King Writer’s Studio. She won the Janet Frame Memorial Award in 2012 and the Beatson Fellowship in 2013.
She is the Poetry Editor for ‘The Mix’ in the Otago Daily Times.
In 2013 she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to writing and education. She lives in Dunedin with her husband, author Philip Temple.
Links
Creative Writing Dunedin's website
Photographer credit: Philip Temple