Roma Tearne


Roma Tearne is a Sri Lankan-born artist and writer living and working in England. Her debut novel, Mosquito, was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Book Awards first Novel prize.

Biography and career

Roma Tearne completed an MA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford in September 2002 and was Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2002-3. She was Artist in Residence at Modern Art Oxford in February 2005. In October 2005 she started a three-year post-doctoral AHRC fellowship at Oxford Brookes University.
Thereafter Tearne began to write. Her first novel, Mosquito, was published by Harper Collins in 2007 and shortlisted for the Costa Prize. Her second novel, Bone China, appeared in the spring of 2008, and her third, Brixton Beach in 2009, became a "TV Book Club Read". Her fourth novel, The Swimmer, was published in May 2010 and long-listed for the Orange Prize. A film based on the narrative was made by Tearne and shown at the Venice Biennale in 2011. Her fifth novel, The Road to Urbino published in 2012, was long-listed for the Asian Man Booker. Another film by Tearne, based on this novel, was shown at the National Gallery, London, in June of that year. She herself has directed and shot five short films, the last of which, Letter from Urbino, was screened at the National Gallery, London in 2012. She has since written two more novels, The Last Pier and The White City, and is working on an eighth.

Publications