It is the title story in her collection False River (Penguin, 2017), a book that combines stories and essays around the theme of lies and secret histories. Her short story False River was shortlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story. Since 2015 she has taught at the University of Auckland, where she convenes the Master of Creative Writing programme. īetween 20, Morris was fiction writer-in-residence at the University of Sheffield.

At Stirling she was programme director of the new MLitt in Creative Writing (Prose). įrom 2005 until 2010, Morris was an assistant professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, moving back to the UK in 2010 to teach at the University of Stirling in Scotland. In the spring of 2003 she was also the University of Iowa International Program's Writer-in-Residence. įrom 2002 to 2004, Morris attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship (2002–03) and a Teaching-Writing Fellowship (2003–04), graduating with an MFA. In 2001 she moved back to New Zealand to join the MA in Creative Writing programme at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was taught by Bill Manhire. Morris began taking fiction-writing classes at the West Side Y in 1997, and started making her living from writing two years later, freelancing as a copywriter and promotions manager for The New York Times, writing encyclopaedia entries for Contemporary Black Biography, and also working as a freelance branding consultant.

During her four years at BMG Classics she rose to become Label Director of ECM and eventually Vice-President of Marketing for World Music and Jazz.

In 1994, Morris moved to New York to become Product Manager for the German record label ECM, then distributed by BMG. After completing a DPhil at the University of York, under the supervision of Hermione Lee, and after a brief stint living in Manchester, she moved to London, working for BBC Radio 3 as a production assistant, Virgin Records as Press Officer for Virgin Classics, and PolyGram (now Universal) as Press and Promotions Manager for Philips. She graduated from the University of Auckland in 1985 with a BA in English and history, and moved to the United Kingdom the same year. Her father is a New Zealander and her mother is English the family's tribal affiliations are Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Manuhiri and Ngāti Whātua. Morris was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. She is an associate professor at the University of Auckland and founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature. Paula Jane Kiri Morris MNZM (born 18 August 1965) is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer editor and literary academic. Magnolias and rattlesnakes: the southern lady in American fiction (1989)

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