Alana Bolton Cooke
Alana Bolton Cooke worked as a Registered Nurse in New Zealand and England. After marrying she went to live in Christchurch New Zealand. Here she went to the University of Canterbury as a mature student and majored in English, completing BA Hons in English Literature and MA in English Literature. Her thesis was about Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve. She completed a Master of Creative Writing at AUT, writing a novel about the War of the Spanish Succession (the Battle of Blenheim and the Duke of Marlborough), called The Sword and the Sun.
Alana has published articles for a newspaper and magazine, and a short story for the Listener. For the last several years she has beenparticipating in a critique group at AUT.
A Splendid Sin is her novel about Michelangelo and his painting of The Last Judgement
Media & Reviews
"Readers cannot but come away from this book feeling that they have experienced the texture of the time and the nature of the artist."
Peter Guilderdale / Associate Head, School of Art and Design, AUT
"A Splendid Sin evokes the artistic rivalries and hypocrisies that haunted Michelangelo from his earliest days. For lovers of art, it is a pleasure to gain insights into his creative process, drawn (if you'll excuse the pun) against the backdrop of Renaissance Rome and Florence and the internecine workings of the Vatican. Moving and sensitively written, A Splendid Sin is rewarding and entrancing read."
J.A. Grierson / Author of Rivers Ran Red!
"Part of the pleasure of reading this novel was the stimulus to find the paintings referenced in it, in the books I have at home."
Lisa Hill, ANZ Lit Lovers Blog