Sarah Laing

Sarah Laing (born 1973) is a New Zealand author, graphic novelist and graphic designer.

Background Laing was born in 1973 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, United States and grew up in Palmerston North, New Zealand. As a teenager she moved to Wellington and has also lived in Germany, New York, and Auckland. She is currently based in Wellington.

Career

Laing has a background in graphic design and worked as an illustrator. She illustrated Macaroni Moon, a children's poetry book by Paula Green.

In 2007, she published her first collection of short stories, Coming up Roses. Her first novel, Dead People’s Music, was published in 2009. The Times Literary Supplement said of the UK edition (Lightning Books): "Her watercolour-washed drawings delight us."

With Rae Joyce and Indira Neville, Laing was the co-editor of Three Words: An Anthology of Aotearoa/NZ Women's Comics, published in 2016.

In 2019, she published Let Me Be Frank (Victoria University Press), an anthology of her comics dating back to 2010, in which she documented the breakdown of her marriage. Again, a UK edition was published by Lightning Books.

Awards

In 2006, Laing won the 2006 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition.

Laing was a writer-in-residence at the Michael King Writers Centre in 2008 and 2013. With Sonja Yelich she received the 2010 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship.

Mansfield and Me: a Graphic Memoir was long listed in the Illustrated non-fiction category of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Work

Coming Up Roses (short stories), 2007 Dead People's Music, 2009 The Fall of Light, Vintage, 2013, Mansfield and Me, 2016 Three Words: an anthology of Aotearoa/New Zealand Women's Comics, 2016 Let Me Be Frank, 2019 Sylvia and the Birds: How the Bird Lady Saved Birds and How You Can, Too, 2022