Sarah Laing

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.[1]

Self-portrait, 2018

Laing has a background in graphic design and worked as an illustrator.[1] She completed a master's degree at Unitec in 2016.[2] She illustrated Macaroni Moon, a children's poetry book by Paula Green.[3]

In 2007 she published her first collection of short stories, Coming up Roses.[4] Her first novel, Dead People’s Music, was published in 2009.[5][6] She is also the author of the short story ebook Inside a Pomegranate.[1]

Following her time at the Sargeson Centre, she wrote and illustrated her second novel, The Fall of Light.[1]

In 2016 she published the memoir Mansfield and Me: a Graphic Memoir (Victoria University Press), using the life and work of Katherine Mansfield to reflect on her own experiences; it was described as "part biography of Katherine Mansfield, part autobiography, and part account of her nagging insecurity about her own abilities."[1][6] The Times Literary Supplement said of the UK edition (Lightning Books): "Her watercolour-washed drawings delight us."[7]

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.[8][9]

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.[10] Again, a UK edition was published by Lightning Books.[11]

In 2006, Laing won the 2006 Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition.[12]

Laing was a writer in resident at the Michael King Writers Centre in 2008 and 2013.[13] With Sonja Yelich she received the 2010 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship.[14]

Mansfield and Me: a Graphic Memoir was long listed in the Illustrated non-fiction category of the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.[15]

• Coming Up Roses (short stories), 2007
• Dead People's Music, 2009
• The Fall of Light, Vintage, 2013, ISBN 9781775533030
• 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

• Sarah Laing's blog, Let Me Be Frank