Liane Moriarty
Liane was born on a beautiful November day in 1966 in Sydney. A few hours after she was born, she smiled directly at her father through the nursery glass window, which is remarkable, seeing as most babies can’t even focus their eyes at that age.
Her first word was ‘glug’. This was faithfully recorded in the baby book kept by her mother. (As the eldest of the six children, Liane was the only one to get a baby book so she likes to refer to it often).
As a child, she loved to read, so much so that school friends would cruelly hide their books when she came to play. She still doesn’t know how to go to sleep at night without first reading a novel for a very long time in a very hot bath.
She can’t remember the first story she ever wrote, but she does remember her first publishing deal. Her father ‘commissioned’ her to write a novel for him and paid her an advance of $1.00. She wrote a three volume epic called, ‘The Mystery of Dead Man’s Island’
After leaving school, Liane began a career in advertising and marketing. She became quite corporate for a while, wore suits and worried a lot about the size of her office. She eventually left her position as marketing manager of a legal publishing company to run her own (not especially successful) business called The Little Ad Agency. After that she worked as (a more successful, thankfully) freelance advertising copywriter, writing everything from websites and TV commercials to the back of the Sultana Bran box.
She also wrote short stories and many first chapters of novels that didn’t go any further. The problem was that she didn’t actually believe that real people had novels published. Then one day she found out that they did, when her younger sister Jaclyn Moriarty called to say that her (brilliant, hilarious, award-winning) novel, Feeling Sorry for Celia was about to be published.
In a fever of sibling rivalry, Liane rushed to the computer and wrote a children’s book called The Animal Olympics, which went on to be enthusiastically rejected by every publisher in Australia.
She calmed down and enrolled in a Masters degree at Macquarie University in Sydney. As part of that degree, she wrote her first novel, Three Wishes. It was accepted by the lovely people at Pan Macmillan and went on to be published around the world. (Her latest books are published by the equally lovely people at Amy Einhorn Books in the US and Penguin in the UK).
Since then she has written six more novels, The Last Anniversary, What Alice Forgot, The Hypnotists Love Story, The Husband’s Secret, Big Little Lies, and Truly Madly Guilty, as well as the Nicola Berry series for children.
Liane’s first novel Liane & Jaclyn
In August 2013 Liane’s fifth novel The Husband’s Secret was released in the US and within two weeks had climbed the charts to become a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Much champagne was drunk.
The Husband’s Secret went on to sell over 3 million copies worldwide. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and was a top 10 bestseller in the UK where it was a Richard and Judy Book Club selection. CBS Films has optioned the film rights.
Her next novel, Big Little Lies was published in July 2014 and debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, making Liane the first Australian author to have a novel debut in the top spot in the US. Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon snapped up the film and television rights. Liane was so dazzled by their combined star power she became briefly disoriented but recovered in time to accept their offer.
The hardcover editions of Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret, along with the paperback edition of “What Alice Forgot” appeared simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list during 2014, making Liane one of the few authors in the world to ever have three books on the New York Times bestseller lists at the same time.
Liane’s most recent novel Truly Madly Guilty was published in 2016 and also debuted at number one on the New York Times Bestseller list. Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, together with their respective production companies, have once again partnered to option the film and TV rights.
Liane’s youngest sister Nicola Moriarty has also written three wonderful, gripping novels, Free-Falling, Paper Chains and The Fifth Letter.
Liane is now a full-time author. She has sold over six million copies of her books worldwide and her novels have been translated into thirty-nine languages.
She lives in Sydney with her husband, son and daughter. When she’s not writing, she can be found reading, demanding coffee, clutching her forehead and occasionally falling to her knees on the soccer field sidelines (the grief, the joy, the drama!) demanding chocolate, skiing like she’s thirty years younger than she is, recovering from skiing injuries, doing the school run, walking around the block to avoid writer’s block, talking to old friends about getting old, listening to her children explain the wonders of MineCraft, watching TV series far too late into the night and reading, which has already been mentioned, but deserves a second mention.
© picnicontheshelf, June 8, 2018
2 Comments
ancasicartile
Mi-a plăcut mult cum scrie!😙
Radulescu Gabriela
Da, se vede ca este pasionata. 🙂 Abia astept sa mai citesc carti ale ei.