Name L. Wright Role Writer | Nominations Hammett Prize | |
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Died February 25, 2001, Vancouver, Canada Awards Edgar Award for Best Novel, Derrick Murdoch Award, Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel Books The Suspect, Sleep while I sing, A chill rain in January, Acts of Murder, Strangers Among Us | ||
Laurali "Bunny" Rose Wright (née Appleby) (5 June 1939 – 25 February 2001) was a Canadian writer of mystery novels.
Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Wright worked as an actor (with her husband, John Wright, including a stint doing summer stock in Dawson City) and journalist before publishing her first novel, Neighbours, in 1979. Her earliest novels were literary fiction; after the publication of The Suspect (1985), her first mystery novel and winner of the 1986 Edgar Award for Best Novel, she concentrated exclusively on the genre. One further work of literary fiction, Love in the Temperate Zone, appeared in 1988.
L.R. Wright was educated at Carleton, the University of Calgary, UBC, and Simon Fraser University. Early in her life she wrote for the Saskatoon Star Phoenix but her first article was for the Globe and Mail about being a teenager in Germany. She later moved to Calgary, where she was mentored by W.O. Mitchell. She worked for several years as a journalist at the Calgary Herald eventually becoming Assistant City Editor, before turning to full-time writing in 1977. In addition to the Edgar Award, she received the Arthur Ellis Award and wrote several adaptations of her novels for CBC Radio. Her daughter has remarked that her mother's time in Calgary had a great impact on her writing. L. R. Wright's novels have been published and distributed throughout the world in several languages.
Wright rarely used her given names for any purpose. She published all her novels as L. R. Wright (except in the USA, where she appeared as Laurali Wright), and was known as Bunny in her personal life.
Wright died of breast cancer in Vancouver, British Columbia.