Tom Rachman

Last updated

Tom Rachman (born September 1974) [1] is an English-Canadian author. His debut novel was The Imperfectionists (2010), about a group of journalists working in Rome during the collapse of the traditional news media. The book became a global bestseller, published in 25 languages, [2] and Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B, optioned the film rights. [3]

Contents

Rachman was born in London, England, and grew up in Vancouver, Canada. He studied cinema at the University of Toronto and obtained a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Later, he studied behavioral science at the London School of Economics.

Rachman's first job in journalism was as an editor of international news at Associated Press headquarters in New York. Later, he was sent to the Rome bureau as a foreign correspondent. He moved to Paris to write fiction, and worked there at the global edition of The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune. [4] After publishing The Imperfectionists in 2010, he quit full-time journalism to write further novels while contributing non-fiction articles to The New York Times, The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal , The New Yorker and The Atlantic , among other publications. [5]

His novel The Italian Teacher, about the troubled son of a famous American painter, was nominated for the Costa Award for best novel. [6] His collection of short stories, Basket of Deplorables, set during the Trump presidency, was nominated for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. [7] Rachman ghost-wrote the nonfiction book, We Are Bellingcat , with Eliot Higgins, founder of the online-investigative collective known for exposing Russian-state criminality, such as the Skripal poisoning. [8]

Rachman currently lives in London, and is a contributing columnist to the Canadian newspaper The Globe & Mail . His writing has twice been included in the Best Canadian Essays anthologies, [9] [10] and was nominated for a 2024 National Newspaper Award. [11]

His father was the psychologist Stanley Rachman, his brother is the Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman and his sister Carla is an art historian; their sister Emily died of breast cancer in 2012. [12]

Works

Fiction

Non-fiction

Notes

  1. "The Imperfectionists - a novel by Tom Rachman - About Tom". Archived from the original on 27 May 2013. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  2. Bethune, Brian. "Tom Rachman's latest novel asks: can a great artist be a good father?". Macleans.ca. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  3. "Brad Pitt buys rights to 'The Imperfectionists'". EW.com. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  4. "The Debut". University of Toronto Magazine. 14 March 2011. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  5. "Articles". Tom Rachman. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  6. Clark, Clare (25 December 2018). "The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman review – great art and monstrous selfishness". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  7. "Previous shortlists and winners". The Edge Hill Short Story Prize. 20 June 2022. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  8. 1 2 Harding, Luke (1 February 2021). "We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins review – the reinvention of reporting for the internet age". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  9. "Best Canadian Essays 2023". Biblioasis. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  10. "Best Canadian Essays 2025". Biblioasis. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  11. "All The Globe and Mail's winners and finalists for the 2023 National Newspaper Awards". The Globe and Mail. 26 April 2024. Retrieved 29 April 2024.
  12. "How I mourned my sister through the books she left behind". Washington Post. 27 May 2016. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
  13. "Scotiabank Giller Prize 2010 Announces Its Longlist". www.scotiabank.com. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  14. "Winners of CAA Literary Awards Revealed - The BPC". www.thebpc.ca. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  15. "Shortlist 2018". Short Story. 18 June 2018. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  16. "Shortlist for 2018 Costa Book Awards announced". Evening Standard. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  17. "Review | For an aging novelist, the blurring lines of fact and fiction". Washington Post. 23 July 2023. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 7 March 2024.


Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giller Prize</span> Canadian literary award

The Giller Prize is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year, after an annual juried competition between publishers who submit entries. The prize was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star, and is awarded in November of each year along with a cash reward with the winner being presented by the previous year's winning author.

Russell Claude Smith is a Canadian writer and newspaper columnist. Smith's novels and short stories are mostly set in Toronto, where he lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Toews</span> Canadian writer (born 1964)

Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

André Alexis is a Canadian writer who was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, grew up in Ottawa, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario. He has received numerous awards including the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize, the Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the Trillium Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eden Robinson</span> Indigenous Canadian author

Eden Victoria Lena Robinson is an Indigenous Canadian author. She is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations in British Columbia, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Bergen</span> Canadian writer

David Bergen is a Canadian novelist. He has published eleven novels and two collections of short stories since 1993 and is currently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and he was a finalist again in 2010 and 2020, making the long list in 2008.

Annabel Lyon is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. She has published two collections of short fiction, two young adult novels, and two adult historical novels, The Golden Mean and its sequel, The Sweet Girl.

The Orwell Prize is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity governed by a board of trustees. Four prizes are awarded each year: one each for a fiction and non-fiction book on politics, one for journalism and one for "Exposing Britain's Social Evils" ; between 2009 and 2012, a fifth prize was awarded for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".

Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heather O'Neill</span> Canadian writer (b. 1973)

Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eleanor Catton</span> New Zealand novelist and screenwriter

Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master's degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, written as her Master's thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter. In 2023, she was named on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathy Page</span> British-Canadian writer (born 1958)

Kathy Page is a British-Canadian writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathleen Winter</span> English-Canadian writer

Kathleen Winter is an English-Canadian short story writer and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Williams (writer)</span> Canadian poet and writer

Ian Williams is a Canadian poet and fiction writer. His collection of short stories, Not Anyone's Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and his debut novel, Reproduction, was awarded the 2019 Giller Prize. His work has been shortlisted for various awards, as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eliot Higgins</span> British citizen journalist

Eliot Ward Higgins, who previously wrote under the pseudonym Brown Moses, is a British citizen journalist and former blogger, known for using open sources and social media for investigations. He is the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. He has investigated incidents including the Syrian Civil War, the Russo-Ukrainian War, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. He first gained mainstream media attention by identifying weapons in uploaded videos from the Syrian conflict.

Souvankham Thammavongsa is a Laotian Canadian poet and short story writer. In 2019, she won an O. Henry Award for her short story, "Slingshot", which was published in Harper's Magazine, and in 2020 her short story collection How to Pronounce Knife won the Giller Prize.

Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British citizen journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies.

<i>Us Conductors</i> 2014 novel by Sean Michaels

Us Conductors is a debut novel by Canadian writer Sean Michaels. Published in 2014 by Random House in Canada and Tin House in the United States, the novel is a fictionalized account of the relationship between Léon Theremin, the inventor of the theremin, and Clara Rockmore, the musician regarded as the instrument's first virtuoso player.

Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Leroux</span> Canadian novelist (born 1979)

Catherine Leroux is a Canadian novelist who usually writes in French.