Palmerston North-based writer Laura Jean McKay recently won $125,000 at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, taking out the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Fiction award for her novel The Animals in That Country.
The book imagines the consequences of a pandemic virus that gives infected humans the ability to understand animals.
McKay is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University, with a PhD from the University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies.
She will be appearing at Adelaide Writers Week on February 27th, and the Bristol Festival of Ideas on March 16th. Both of these events can be attended online.
Laura Jean McKay Photo: supplied / Kyra Clarke
