Simone Lazaroo

Biography

Simone Lazaroo is a published fiction writer and teaches creative writing at Murdoch University. Her prize-winning novels explore ways in which individuals living at the intersection of cultures in Australia, England and south-east Asian cities make identity and meaning. Her short stories have been published in England, USA and Australia, and a bilingual edition of her most recent short fiction about encounters between tourists and locals in European and North American cities in the aftermath of the global financial crisis was published in Spain (2016). Her current projects explore contemporary individuals’ experiences of tourism, migration, consumerism, poverty, desire, spirituality, grief and photography in south-east Asian, European and Australian cities. She is a member of an international team (led by Professor Isabel Carrera Suarez, University of Oviedo, Spain ) researching literary representations of contemporary cities. She has been the recipient of Australia Council and Western Australian Department of Culture and the Arts literature grants and has judged various literary prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Australia/New Zealand region, 2005). She was a visiting Erasmus Mundus scholar at the University of Oviedo, (2014), a David TK Wong Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia inEngland (2000), plenary speaker at University of Barcelona, Liege and Lisbon and has spoken at various national and international literary festivals and community events.

Research Interest

Simone Lazaroo’s current fiction projects include short stories and a novel. Her short stories in progress explore contemporary individuals’ experiences of migration, globalisation, travel, consumerism, desire, photography, loss and memorialisation. in cities. She is researching the commodification of history, archaeological artefacts, tourism, consumerism and interactions between tourists, residents and unemployed people in European, south-east Asian and Australian cities, for a new novel. She is a research team member in a project led by Professor Isabel Carrera Suarez (University of Oviedo, Spain), researching the figure of the stranger in cosmopolitan cities.   Her past fiction has explored the impact of  tourism and Empire on individuals in Singapore and other south-east Asian locations; the impact of the ‘White Australia Policy’ on individuals after World War 2 and north-Western Australian landscapes. She’s also interested in contemporary American fiction.