Laura Moriarty

After spending several years as a social worker in the Kansas City area, Laura Moriarty started writing her first novel, "The Center of Everything," a coming of age story about a precocious young girl growing up with her single mother in the eighties. The novel is not autobiographical; rather, Moriarty drew on some of the people she met as a social worker as the inspirations for her characters, using the Reagan years as a historical and cultural backdrop. The Center of Everything was published by Hyperion in 2003, allowing Moriarty to write full-time.

Moriarty’s second novel, "The Rest of Her Life," was published in 2007. "The Rest of Her Life" is about a young woman who accidentally kills a pedestrian with the family car; the book tracks the emotional consequences her family must face, and also how the accident changes the relationship between the young woman and her well-intentioned, but troubled, mother. Her latest novel, "While I'm Falling" (Hyperion) is already the winner of the Elle Readers' Prize. The novel looks deeply at the relationship between a daughter and a mother when one is trying to grow up and the other is trying to stay afloat.

Moriarty has spoken at numerous venues and events, including the Midwestern Booksellers Association Tradeshow, women’s conferences and schools in the Kansas City area. Her awards include the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing, Phillips Exeter Academy, and being named one of Kansas University’s ‘Women of Distinction, 2004.”

Moriarty has also taught literature and writing classes. She lives with her daughter in Lawrence, Kansas.           

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Fiction and Motherhood

Work and Motherhood

Women and Fiction