James Lasdun

Last updated

James Lasdun (born 8 June 1958) is an English novelist and poet.

Contents

Life and career

Lasdun was born in London, [1] the son of Susan (Bendit) and British architect Sir Denys Lasdun. [2] [3] Lasdun has written four novels, including The Horned Man, 2002, a New York Times Notable Book, and Seven Lies, 2006, which was an Economist Book of the Year and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction. He has published four collections of short stories, including The Siege: Selected Stories, the title story of which was adapted for film by Bernardo Bertolucci as Besieged in 1998. His latest collection It's Beginning To Hurt, 2009 was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Library Journal and the Atlantic. Lasdun has written four books of poetry, one of which, Landscape with Chainsaw, [4] was a finalist for the T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was also selected as a TLS International Book of the Year.

In 2013 he published a memoir: Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked. His alleged stalker wrote a memoir in response called Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror. [5]

With Jonathan Nossiter, Lasdun co-wrote the film Sunday in 1997, based on his story Ate Menos or The Miracle, winning both the Best Feature Award and the Waldo Salt Best Screenplay Award at Sundance. Together they also wrote the next Nossiter film Signs and Wonders in 2000, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard, selected for the official selection of the 50th Berlin International Film Festival [6] in 2000.

His reviews and essays have appeared in Harper's, Granta, the London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New Yorker.

With his wife, Pia Davis, Lasdun has written two guidebooks dedicated to the combined pleasures of walking and eating: one in Tuscany and Umbria, the other in Provence.

He has taught creative writing at Princeton, New York University, the New York State Writers' Institute, the New School, Columbia University and Bennington College.

Critical appraisals of his work include reviews by James Wood in The Guardian, [7] Gabriele Annan in The New York Review of Books [8] and Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Observer. [9]

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Collections

Poetry

Collections

Nonfiction

Miscellaneous

Honors

Notes

  1. "Search Results for England & Wales Births 1837-2006". Archived from the original on 24 August 2017. Retrieved 24 August 2017.
  2. Rowntree, Diana (12 January 2001). "Sir Denys Lasdun". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 29 July 2019. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  3. Archived 24 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine Book review by Jenny Turner in The Guardian
  4. Birnbaum (14 February 2006), Identity Theory (interview), archived from the original on 19 April 2006, retrieved 8 May 2006.
  5. "Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror". Goodreads. Retrieved 28 April 2024.
  6. "Berlinale: 2000 Programm". berlinale.de. Archived from the original on 11 November 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
  7. "Book review". The Guardian. London, UK. 29 May 1999. Archived from the original on 14 March 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016..
  8. Annan, Gabriele (9 May 2002). "Who Killed Bogomil Trumilcik?". New York Review of Books. 49 (8). Archived from the original on 28 February 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014..
  9. "Victory by James Lasdun review – suspenseful, truthful, audacious". The Observer. London. 3 March 2019. Archived from the original on 6 March 2019. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
  10. Online version is titled "My dentist's murder trial".
  11. "Writers Institute website". Archived from the original on 22 April 2006. Retrieved 8 May 2006.
  12. "The Short Story (UK) website". Archived from the original on 21 August 2006. Retrieved 23 August 2006.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Powers</span> American novelist (born 1957)

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novel The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2023, Powers has published thirteen novels and has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice McDermott</span> American writer, novelist, essayist (born 1953)

Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. She was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.

James Martin Fenton is an English poet, journalist and literary critic. He is a former Oxford Professor of Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Etgar Keret</span> Israeli writer (born 1967)

Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer known for his short stories, graphic novels, and scriptwriting for film and television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Grossman</span> Israeli author (born 1954)

David Grossman is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Kermode</span> British literary critic (1919–2010)

Sir John Frank Kermode, FBA was a British literary critic best known for his 1967 work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. K. Williams</span> American poet, critic and translator (1936–2015)

Charles Kenneth "C. K." Williams was an American poet, critic and translator. Williams won many poetry awards. Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The Singing won the 2003 National Book Award and Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. The 2012 film The Color of Time relates aspects of Williams' life using his poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Berryman</span> American poet and scholar (1914–1972)

John Allyn McAlpin Berryman was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in the "confessional" school of poetry. His 77 Dream Songs (1964) won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Kleinzahler</span> American poet (born 1949)

August Kleinzahler is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geoff Dyer</span> English writer (born 1958)

Geoff Dyer is an English author. He has written a number of novels and non-fiction books, some of which have won literary awards.

Alexander Wright Masters is an English author, screenwriter, and worker with the homeless. He lives in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Gantos</span> American author of childrens books

Jack Gantos is an American author of children's books. He is best known for the fictional characters Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza. Rotten Ralph is a cat who stars in twenty picture books written by Gantos and illustrated by Nicole Rubel from 1976 to 2014. Joey Pigza is a boy with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), featured in five novels from 1998 to 2014.

Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English".

Donald Heiney was a sailor and academic as well as a prolific and inventive writer using the pseudonym of MacDonald Harris for fiction.

Alicia Elsbeth Stallings is an American poet, translator, and essayist.

Robin Robertson is a Scottish poet.

Benedict Richard Pierce Macintyre is a British author, reviewer and columnist for The Times newspaper. His columns range from current affairs to historical controversies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Phillips</span> American writer and poet (born 1959)

Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2023, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020.

Frances Wilson is an English author, academic, and critic.

List of works by or about Richard Powers, American novelist.