Born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Brown received her B.A. from the University of Toronto. Her first book, the Handless Maiden (Doubleday, 1997), follows a teenager, sexually abused as a child. She shows great potential to become a concert pianist, but loses the use of her hand in a gun accident. The novel was nominated for the 1999 Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. "The novel started coming together in late 1989,"; she says, "when I was sick to death of looking at the 20th draft of the same sophomoric drivel, the 'semi-autobiographical first novel'. It was so damned boring! For an educated woman, I took the caveat, 'Write what you know' entirely too literally... What was interesting about the safe, suburban life I had led?"; She was inspired to write The Handless Maiden instead after reading Linda Schierse Leonard's The Wounded Woman. Loranne Brown lives in Langley and has served on the executive of the Federation of B.C. Writers.

[BCBW 2003]