How I became a writer
I like to turn anxiety into bleak humour. I love producing what I’d call ‘uncensored fiction’ about flawed characters and flailing relationships. I also write about mental health. My debut novel (Penguin Books UK) was described by Bidisha as ‘Seinfeld meets Dorothy Parker’.
I’ve always enjoyed (eavesdropping and) creating ‘dialogue with a disconnect’. My first piece of fiction was a play, ‘The Only Thing in Common’, about a couple that simultaneously stab each other in the back. I wrote it when I was 12, and it was televised by South Pacific Television in Aotearoa NZ.
This early interest in writing was no doubt sparked by having seen aspects of myself and other family members typed up on an Olivetti typewriter and turned into short stories and novels by my mother, NZ author Marilyn Duckworth. As a result of this insider-view, I have a particular interest in the fluid boundary between fiction and nonfiction.
When I was a teenager I visited my mother during her Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, at Villa Isola Bella, in Menton, France, where my passion for writing (and French literature) grew. I moved to France in my twenties; became London-based in my thirties; and had my first novel published by Penguin Books UK in my forties. For writing updates from the next decade, see below – and join the ‘Farlane on Writing’ mailing list.
Author bio
Mia Farlane writes literary fiction / acerbic comedy, set in London, Paris, and Wellington. Her first novel, Footnotes to Sex, is published with Viking/Penguin Books UK. She worked for 11+ years at Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library.
She is a translator/contributor in No, Love Is Not Dead: An Anthology of Love Poetry from Around the World (Chambers 2021/2023). She has also written creative nonfiction: ‘Are You Okay? (A Writing Event)’, published in 2020 by UK literary magazine, Moxy. Her story 'Like-Minded People' won the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival 2022 (SMHAF) writing competition in the fiction category. Her story ‘Qiu Miaojin Is Still Alive’ has been selected as one of the five winners in Radio NZ’s Nine To Noon 2024 Short Story Competition.
Farlane was born in Aotearoa NZ, where she is currently based. She has lived most of her adult life with the writer Kristen Phillips, in the UK – as well as several years in France, and periods of time in Aotearoa for family reasons. Her chosen home is South London. You might have seen her at book events, including Polari Salons (she headlined at one of these – see Events) at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, or at author readings at Foyles, Charing Cross (with Stella Duffy, VG Lee, Drew Gummerson and Adam Mars-Jones). If you’d like to feature her as part of your online / hybrid event, book group or podcast, please get in touch.
Farlane has a First Class Honours Degree in French Language and Literature from Te Herenga Waka University (Victoria University), Wellington and an MA Writing from Middlesex University, London. She posts bilingual book reviews at Farlane on French Writers. She is a member of UK’s Society of Authors and Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa / NZSA (PEN NZ). She is also a member of Out on the Page, and has belonged to a small London-based writing group since 2003.