People like Roma Tearne

Roma Tearne (née Chrysostom; born 1954) 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 (formerly the Whitbread Prize).

Roma Tearne completed an MA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, in September 2002. She was Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 2002–2003, then 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, appeared with Harper Collins in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Costa Prize. Her second, Bone China, followed in spring 2008. Her third, Brixton Beach in 2009, became a "TV Book Club Read", and her fourth The Swimmer (May 2010) was long-listed for the Orange Prize, while 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 (2012) was long-listed for the Asian Man Booker, while another film by Tearne, based on the novel, was shown at the National Gallery, London, in June of that year. She herself directed and shot five short films, the last, Letter from Urbino, being 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.