Olivia Laing

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Olivia Laing (born 1977 ) is a British journalist , writer , essayist and cultural critic . She is the author of the non-fiction books To the River , The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, and The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone , which have been translated into 15 languages. Her most recent novel was Crudo . In 2018 she was nominated for the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction. In 2019 she won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crudo , the oldest literary prize in Great Britain. She is a member of the Royal Society of Literature .

biography

Education and Early Life

Olivia Laing grew up in Chalfont St. Peter , Buckinghamshire . She turned down a place at the University of Cambridge because she preferred the more radical curriculum at the University of Sussex , where she studied English, but left to pursue her work as a political activist and environmentalist. At that time she was living in seclusion near Brighton . Graduated from herbal medicine in 2003 and worked as a naturopath for several years before becoming a journalist.

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Between 2007 and 2009, Laing was deputy editor-in-chief of the Observer's literature section . She writes regularly on art and literature for The Guardian . She wrote the foreword to Close to the Knives , the autobiography of the artist David Wojnarowicz, and Modern Nature , a diary by the filmmaker Derek Jarman . In 2017 she made the documentary Vanished into Music about the musician Arthur Russell for BBC Radio 4.

Laing's first book To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface was published in 2011. In it she walks along the Ouse , the river in which Virginia Woolf drowned herself in 1941, and uses Woolf's life and work to reflect on the relationship between history, place and the difficulties of biographies . The much acclaimed book was nominated for the Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award .

The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking was published in 2013 and had many celebrity fans, including Nick Cave and Hilary Mantel , who described it as one of the best books she has read on dealing with setbacks in artistic creation. On her journey through America, Laing explores the complex and intricate relationship between creativity and alcoholism through the life stories of six male American writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald , Ernest Hemingway , Tennessee Williams , John Berryman , John Cheever and Raymond Carver . Her book was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and the Gordon Burn Prize and was listed as the New York Times Notable Book of 2014 .

In 2016 her third book, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone , was published. In it, she describes loneliness in urban space - as in The Trip to Echo Spring - using the biographies of six male artists: Edward Hopper , Andy Warhol , David Wojnarowicz , Henry Darger , Klaus Nomi and Josh Harris. Based on personal experiences with being alone in a phase in which she was living in New York, Laing regards loneliness as a culturally stigmatized state and thereby creates a new access to the works of the sometimes very famous artists. It has been translated into 15 languages ​​and has been nominated for the Gordon Brun Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism .

In 2018, Laing's first novel Crudo was published , which is difficult to assign to a genre. The key novel reports on the summer of 2017 as a time of personal upheaval and political crisis. Laing wrote the novel within seven weeks as a tribute to Kathy Acker , who is modeled after the protagonist. It was listed as the New York Times Notable Book of 2018 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize. In 2019 she won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize with Crudo .

reception

Crudo

Alex Lawrie of the University of Edinburgh and member of the jury of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize described Crudo as "[...] fiction at its finest: a bold and reactive political novel that captures a raw slice of contemporary history with pace, charm, and wit. " Alexandra Schwartz described the novel in The New Yorker as "a work of autofiction that captures the apprehension of the present moment."

Prizes and awards

  • 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize (Shortlist) - To the River
  • 2012 Dolman Travel Book of the Year (Shortlist) - To the River
  • 2013 Author Foundation Traveling Scholarship
  • 2013 Costa Biography Award (Shortlist) - The Trip to Echo Spring
  • 2014 Gordon Burn Prize (shortlist) - The Trip to Echo Spring
  • 2014 Eccles British Library Writers Award
  • 2016 Gordon Burn Prize (shortlist) - The Lonely City
  • 2017 National Books Critics Circle Award for Criticism (Shortlist) - The Lonely City
  • 2018 Windham – Campbell Literature Prize
  • 2018 Goldsmiths Prize (Shortlist) - Crudo
  • 2018 Gordon Burn Prize (Shortlist) - Crudo
  • 2019 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Award) - Crudo

bibliography

Non-fiction / essays

  • To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface (Canongate, 2011)
  • The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking (Canongate, 2013)
  • The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (Canongate, 2016)

prose

  • Crudo (Picador, 2018)

Related Links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Olivia Laing | Authors | Janklow & Nesbit. Retrieved October 26, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Olivia Laing - Literature. Retrieved October 26, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Olivia Laing: Once upon a life: Olivia Laing . In: The Guardian . May 14, 2011, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Olivia Laing | The Guardian. Retrieved October 26, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Olivia Laing: Olivia Laing: 'There's no book I love more than Derek Jarman's Modern Nature' . In: The Guardian . April 27, 2018, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  6. ↑ BBC Radio 4 - Seriously ..., Arthur Russell: Vanished into Music. Retrieved October 26, 2019 (UK English).
  7. ↑ Philip Hoare: To The River by Olivia Laing: review . May 11, 2011, ISSN  0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Crossett, Robert Nelson, (Tom), (born May 27, 1938), Chairman: National Flood Forum, 2004-06 (Director, 2003-06); Thames Flood Forum, 2005-08 . In: Who's Who . Oxford University Press, December 1, 2007, doi : 10.1093 / ww / 9780199540884.013.u12428 .
  9. ^ Alison Flood: What's the best travel writing for summer 2012? In: The Guardian . August 9, 2012, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  10. ^ Mark Brown, arts correspondent: Costa book awards 2013: late author on all-female fiction shortlist . In: The Guardian . November 26, 2013, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  11. ↑ Chris Taylor: Gordon Burn Prize 2014: Super Furry Animals frontman nominated . August 12, 2014, ISSN  0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  12. ^ The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2014 . In: The New York Times . December 2, 2014, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  13. ^ Maria Popova: The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone. In: Brain Pickings. July 11, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2019 (American English).
  14. ↑ Alison Flood: David Szalay's 'unsparing' All That Man Is wins Gordon Burn prize . In: The Guardian . October 7, 2016, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  15. ↑ Alexandra Alter: Zadie Smith and Michael Chabon Among National Book Critics Circle Finalists . In: The New York Times . January 17, 2017, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  16. ↑ Suzanne Moore: Crudo by Olivia Laing review - a shimmering experimental novel . In: The Guardian . June 18, 2018, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  17. ^ The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2018 . In: The New York Times . November 19, 2018, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed October 26, 2019]).
  18. ↑ Tales of love and war win centenary book awards. Retrieved October 26, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Mike Cummings: Yale awards eight writers $ 165,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes. March 7, 2018, accessed October 26, 2019 .
  20. ↑ The two winners of the 2014 Eccles British Library Writer in Residence Award are announced. Retrieved October 26, 2019 .
  21. ↑ Mike Cummings: Yale awards eight writers $ 165,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes. March 7, 2018, accessed October 26, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Laing, Olivia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist, writer, essayist and cultural critic
DATE OF BIRTH 1977