James Lasdun

James Lasdun (born 1958 in London) is a writer and academic who currently lives in upstate New York and is married to writer Pia Davis, with whom he co-authored a travel book, Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria. He is the son of the British Architect Sir Denys Lasdun.

Lasdun is one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Career

Writing

He has written two novels, The Horned Man in 2002 and Seven Lies, which was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for fiction. He has published three collections of short stories, including , the title story of which was adapted for film by Bernardo Bertolucci as Besieged; another story from this collection, "Property" was made into a short film by director Piper Laurie. He has also published four books of poetry, one of which ("Landscape with Chainsaw") [1], was shorlisted for the Forward Prize for poetry.

Bibliography

• 2007 The Woman Who Rode Away/ St. Mawr/ The Princess by D.H. Lawrence (introduction)
• 2005 Seven Lies (fiction)
• 2004 Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria (revised edition, with Pia Davis) (travel)
• 2002 The Horned Man (fiction)
• 2002 The Natural Order (article in Open City issue #15)
• 2001 As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo (introduction)
• 2001 Landscape with Chainsaw (poems)
• 2000 La llamada del apóstol Mateo. (The call of the apostle Mateo.) (article in Letras Libres)
• 2000 The Siege (a.k.a. Besieged) (stories)
• 1997 Woman Police Officer in Elevator (poems)
• 1997 Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria (with Pia Davis) (travel)
• 1995 After Ovid: New Metamorphoses (with Michael Hofmann) (poems)
• 1992 Three Evenings (stories)
• 1988 A Jump Start (poems)
• 1985 Delirium Eclipse (stories)
• 1985 The Silver Age (stories)

Teaching

James Lasdun teaches poetry and fiction writing at Princeton University, New York University and Columbia University. [2]

Honors

Among his many honours, he is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, and the 1999 winner of the London Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition. [3] In May 2006 he won the inaugural UK National Short Story Prize [4] for his story An Anxious Man, beating competition from other acclaimed story writers including William Trevor, Rose Tremain and Michel Faber, and taking a prize of £15,000. Chair of the judges, Francine Stock, 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." [5]

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