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Max Porter (writer)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by DGG (talk | contribs) at 19:43, 22 June 2019 (Commenting on submission (AFCH 0.9.1)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

  • Comment: normally when there is only one book, we write the article about the book; In this case, though, there are two, so I will make a redirect from the book after I accept this. A 3rd party review of Lanny would help when it becomes available. DGG ( talk ) 19:43, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Max Porter (born 1981) is an English writer, formerly a bookseller and editor, best known for his critically acclaimed debut Grief is the Thing with Feathers.[1]

Background

Porter was born in High Wycombe in 1981 and received an MA in History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.[2] Prior to his writing career, Porter managed the Chelsea branch of Daunt Books[3] and won the Bookseller of the Year Award in 2009. He is Editorial Director at Granta and Portobello Books.[4]

Works

Grief is the Thing with Feathers is a hybrid of prose and poetic styles about a crow who visits a grieving family of a Ted Hughes scholar and his two young boys.[5] It draws heavily upon Hughes's Crow: From the Life and Songs of Crow and its title is derived from Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers". In 2016, Grief won the Sunday Times PFD Young Writer of the Year Award,[6] the Books Are My Bag Readers' Award for fiction,[7] and the International Dylan Thomas Prize.[8] It has also been shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award[9] and the Goldsmiths Prize for experimental writing.[10] Reviewing for The Guardian, Sarah Crown writes that the book "is heartrending, blackly funny, deeply resonant, a perfect summation of what it means to lose someone but still to love the world – and if it reminds publishers that the best books aren’t always the ones that can be pigeonholed or precised or neatly packaged, so much the better".[11] It has been translated into twenty-seven languages.[12]

Grief is the Thing with Feathers was adapted into a play of the same name, directed by Enda Walsh and starring Cillian Murphy, which premeired in Dublin on the 25th March 2019 and has been performed in London and New York.[13] In an interview, Porter details the experience of adapting Grief for the stage: "[w]ith both Cillian and Enda, the goal was to make the production as true as it could be to the book. There were no changed endings or swapping one feature for another".[14] Cillian Murphy won a Irish Times Theatre Award for "Best Actor" for his performance as the grieving father.[15] The play was a New York Times Critic's Pick, with Ben Brantley writing that the performance "beautifully evoke[s] the way in which the whole world seems apocalyptic after a personal tragedy".[16]

On the 5th March 2019, Porter's second book Lanny was published by Faber and longlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2019.[17] Faber describe Lanny as "a story about a family whose village is peopled by the living and the dead. It’s a story about a boy with a gift for friendship and the traces of enchantment he leaves in the closely woven lives around him".[18] The book examines rural English community life and childhood myth in response to social division and ecological crisis.

Bibliography

Novels/Novellas

  • Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2015)
  • Lanny (2019)

Short Stories

References

  1. ^ Porter, Max (2016-04-03), Max Porter @ 5x15 - Grief is the Thing with Feathers, retrieved 2019-06-21
  2. ^ Crown, Sarah (2015-09-12). "Max Porter: 'The experience of the boys in the novel is based on my dad dying when I was six'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  3. ^ "Max Porter: Interview | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  4. ^ Allardice, Lisa (2019-02-22). "Max Porter: 'I love slang, I love hip-hop. I love the proper use of language'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  5. ^ Porter, Max (2016). Grief is the Thing with Feathers. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571327232.
  6. ^ "Max Porter, Winner 2016". {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  7. ^ "Books Are My Bag Reading Awards". National Book Tokens. Retrieved 2019-06-22. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  8. ^ Flood, Alison. "Dylan Thomas award goes to Max Porter's 'extraordinary feat'". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  9. ^ "Guardian first book award 2015 longlist – in pictures". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  10. ^ "The Goldsmiths Prize 2015: Grief is the Thing with Feathers". The Goldsmiths Prize. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
  11. ^ Crown, Sarah (2015-09-12). "Max Porter: 'The experience of the boys in the novel is based on my dad dying when I was six'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  12. ^ Porter, Max (2019). Lanny. London: Faber. pp. Biography Sleeve. ISBN 978-0-571-34028-6.
  13. ^ "Grief is the Thing with Feathers". Wayward Productions. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  14. ^ Ganatra, Shilpa. "Max Porter: Pushing the boundaries of the written word". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  15. ^ "The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards: And the 2019 winners are . . ". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2019-06-21.
  16. ^ Brantley, Ben (2019-05-12). "Review: What the Crow Knows in 'Grief Is the Thing With Feathers'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  17. ^ "Lanny | Faber and Faber". Faber. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  18. ^ "Max Porter at Cambridge Literary Festival". Faber & Faber Blog. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
  19. ^ "Eight Ghosts Book". English Heritage. Retrieved 2019-06-22.
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