James Lasdun
Encyclopedia
James Lasdun is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and academic. Lasdun was one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize
Griffin Poetry Prize
The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. The awards go to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language....

.

Career

Lasdun teaches or has taught poetry and fiction writing at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 and The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...

.

Writing

Lasdun has written two novels, The Horned Man (2002) and Seven Lies, which was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

 for fiction. He has written three collections of short stories, including The Siege: Collected Stories, the title story of which was adapted for film by Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers...

 as Besieged
Besieged (film)
Besieged is a 1998 film by Bernardo Bertolucci starring Thandie Newton and David Thewlis.It is based on the short story "The Siege" by James Lasdun.-Plot:David Thewlis plays an English pianist/composer living in Rome...

; another story from this collection, Property was made into a short film by director Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie is an American actress of stage and screen known for her roles in the television series Twin Peaks and the films The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God, all of which brought her Academy Award nominations...

. His latest collection It's Beginning To Hurt was published in the UK in 2010 by Random House.

Lasdun has written four books of poetry, one of which, Landscape with Chainsaw, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for poetry.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

 in 2009.

Short stories

  • Delirium Eclipse (1986) a.k.a. The Silver Age (1985)
  • Three Evenings (1992)
  • The Siege (a.k.a. Besieged) (2000)
  • It's Beginning To Hurt (2009)
  • The Hollow (in: The Paris Review, No. 188, 2009)

Poetry

  • A Jump Start (1988)
  • After Ovid: New Metamorphoses
    After Ovid: New Metamorphoses
    After Ovid: New Metamorphoses is a collection of poems inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses.Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun, the two editors of After Ovid: New Metamorphoses, commissioned 42 poets from America, Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, and New Zealand to "translate, reinterpret, reflect on,...

    (with Michael Hofmann
    Michael Hofmann
    Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet who writes in English and a translator of texts from German.-Biography:...

    ) (1995)
  • Woman Police Officer in Elevator (1997)
  • Landscape with Chainsaw (2001)

Honors

  • Recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry
  • Winner (1999) of the London Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition
  • Winner of the inaugural UK National Short Story Prize (May 2006) for his story An Anxious Man, beating competition from other acclaimed story writers including William Trevor
    William Trevor
    William Trevor, KBE is an Irish author and playwright. He is considered one of the elder statesman of the Irish literary world and widely regarded as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language....

    , Rose Tremain
    Rose Tremain
    Rose Tremain CBE is an English author.-Life:Rose Tremain was born Rosemary Jane Thomson on August 2, 1943 in London and attended Francis Holland School then Crofton Grange School from 1954 to 1961; the Sorbonne from 1961–1962; and graduated from the University of East Anglia in 1965 where she then...

     and Michel Faber
    Michel Faber
    Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of fiction. He writes in English.Faber was born in The Hague, Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967...

    , and taking a prize of £15,000. Chair of the judges, Francine Stock
    Francine Stock
    Francine Stock is a British radio and TV presenter and novelist, of part-French origin.-Early life:Born in Devon, and with early years in Edinburgh and Australia, Stock later attended St Catherine's School, Guildford, where she was head girl, and is a graduate of Jesus College, Oxford, with a...

    , said, What we kept coming back to however was the visceral resonance of the winning story. We chose the story that lingered most, but both the winner and the runner-up extended the possibilities of what you can do with the short story. http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1776056,00.html
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