About the Author: Laine Cunningham

Laine Cunningham’s work has won multiple national awards, including the Hackney Literary Award and the James Jones Literary Society fellowship. In past years, the Hackney Award was received by Horton Foote and William Styron, placing Laine in the ranks of Pulitzer Prize-winning authors. She has also received fellowships and residency slots from the Jerome Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the New York Mills Cultural Center, Wildacres and the Cornucopia Arts Center.

Her most recent novel, Beloved: A Sensual Noir Thriller (fka He Drinks Poison), follows a female FBI agent who must access the dark power of the goddess Kali in order to bring down a serial killer. The book was shortlisted for the Pirate’s Alley William Faulkner award.

Her first novel, The Family Made of Dust: A Novel of Loss and Rebirth in the Australian Outback (fka Message Stick), touches on social tensions between Aboriginal and mainstream cultures in Australia. The work was hailed as “The best novel in ten years” by the Hackney awards committee.

A companion book, Seven Sisters: Spiritual Messages from Aboriginal Australia , is also available. The work retells Aboriginal stories in a way that helps modern people address age-old issues of love, parenting, illness and death.

More information can be found at www.LaineCunningham.com.

To support her writing habit, Laine owns a publishing consultancy called Writer’s Resource (www.WritersResource.us). For twenty years she has helped other authors write, rewrite and pitch their books to publishers.

She tends to eat too much chocolate but figures a happy writer with smudgy fingers is much more fun than a cranky one with never a spot on her manuscripts.