About Lauren Roche

Lauren Roche became a successful author in 2000 with the courageous bestselling autobiography, Bent Not Broken.

Her story is an amazing inspirational insight into the resilience of the human spirit when life’s challenges seem overwhelming.

Bent Not Broken describes Lauren’s childhood and adolescence as she struggles to deal with sexual abuse and rape and her life as stripper and prostitute, before she turns her life around … returning to high school and university, eventually graduating as a medical doctor.

A short year later, Lauren released the sequel, Life On The Line, which chronicles the twists and turns in her life including bankruptcy, depression, attempted suicide and the shocking revelation that her son is a sex offender.

Lauren continues to grow and evolve.
In 2007 she completed her first Ironman New Zealand event while working as a GP and studying extramurally for a Bachelor in Applied Theology.

Lauren did her second Ironman NZ event in 2012, prolapsing three discs in her back during training.
Complications of a routine micro-discectomy three weeks after Ironman caused a spinal cord injury with resulting arachnoiditis. This is an incurable, progressive, painful disorder.

Lauren continues to exercise where she can despite being no longer able to swim, bike or run. She now walks bush trails around Whangārei. In 2017 Lauren became a Fellow of the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners – a specialist GP. In 2019 she retired from General Practice because of complications of arachnoiditis.
She is an ambassador for M3 Physio clinic where she does her rehab.

Mila and the Bone Man is Lauren's first novel, written while she was a student at NorthTec.

Lauren graduated a Masters in Creative Writing programme through AUT in 2021, gaining first class honours.

Her thesis, Songs to Sing to the Dying, will be released in 2024.

She is in the process of finishing her third novel ‘The Anatomists’ Handbook’ – keep checking its tab for a blog on progress.

She lives on the stunning Tutukaka Coast Northeast of Whangarei with her partner Graham – an artisan coffee roaster, Lucy the Bichon and Bill the half Manx cat.

Lauren has been moving steadily northwards all her life, and will likely cross the international date line by the time she is 206.