James Lasdun

James Lasdun (born 1958 in London) is an English author, poet and academic. Lasdun was one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Career

Lasdun teaches or has taught poetry and fiction writing at New York University, Columbia University and The New School.

Writing

Lasdun has written two novels, The Horned Man (2002) and Seven Lies, which was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize 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 as Besieged; another story from this collection, Property was made into a short film by director Piper Laurie. 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 in 2009.

Bibliography

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

Novels

• The Horned Man (2002)
• Seven Lies (2005)

Miscellaneous

• Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria (with Pia Davis) (2004)

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, 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. [1]