Laurence Fearnley is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction writer.

Her novel The Hut Builder won the fiction category of the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards. In 2014 her novel Reach was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and, in 2008, Edwin and Matilda was runner-up in the fiction category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Her second novel, Room, was shortlisted for the 2001 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

In 2004 Fearnley was awarded the Artists to Antarctica Fellowship and in 2007 the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. In 2016 she won the NZSA/ Janet Frame Memorial Award and in 2017 she was the joint winner of the Landfall essay competition.

She was named a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2019 and was artist in residence at Henderson House, Alexandra in 2024/5. Her most recent novel At the Grand Glacier Hotel was a shortlisted finalist in the 2025 Ockham Book Awards.