Laura Moriarty

Assistant Professor

2023 Wescoe Hall
785.864.2558
lauramo@ku.edu

M.A. (Kansas)

Areas of Research

Fiction writing, specifically the novel

Selected Publications

While I'm Falling, a novel(Hyperion 2009)

The Rest of Her Life, a novel (Hyperion, 2007)

The Center of Everything, a novel (Hyperion, 2003)

Assistant Professor Moriarty won Elle Magazine's reader-chosen Novel of the Year or The Rest of Her Life (2007). She was Writer in Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy (2000-2001).

Assistant Professor Moriarty won Elle Magazine's Novel of the Year for The Rest of Her Life (2007). She was writer in Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy (2000-2001) and is a winner of the Carlin Graduate Teaching Award.

Faculty Profile

I write literary novels that focus on the stories of women of varying economic classes and ages. My first novel, The Center of Everything, is a coming-of-age story set in Kansas during the Reagan years. From the start, I set out to write a novel of female adolescence that focused on intellectual and emotional growth, and to keep the first-person voice engaging and also realistic. My subsequent protagonists have been adults, but they also have stories of struggle and change. I like to write about flawed human beings with ordinary lives who are forced by circumstance or their own unquiet minds to reconsider long-held beliefs.

I read contemporary novels and memoirs by men and women, and I’m particularly interested in the way varying authors use voice, characters, plot, and language to continually engage a reader through a longer work.  

Assistant Professor Moriarty's Curriculum Vitae