James Lasdun (born 8 June 1958) is an English novelist and poet.
Life and career
Lasdun was born in London, the son of Susan (Bendit) and British architect Sir Denys Lasdun. Lasdun has written four novels, including The Horned Man, 2002, a New York Times Notable Book, and Seven Lies, 2006, which was an Economist Book of the Year and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction. He has published four collections of short stories, including The Siege: Selected Stories, the title story of which was adapted for film by Bernardo Bertolucci as Besieged in 1998. His collection It's Beginning To Hurt, 2009 was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Library Journal and the Atlantic. Lasdun has written four books of poetry, one of which, Landscape with Chainsaw, was a finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was also selected as a TLS International Book of the Year. He is the winner of the 2026 biennial Katherine Anne Porter Prize, awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an Emmy (Best Limited Series) as Executive Producer of HBO's 2026 miniseries, DTF St Louis, inspired by his New Yorker article "My Dentist's Murder Trial: Adultery, False Identities, and a Lethal Sedation".
In 2013 he published a memoir: Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, described by Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker as "a rigorous and moving and very elegantly wrought examination of obsession, relentlessness, power, envy and ambition". In 2022 he began covering the Murdaugh murders in South Carolina for The New Yorker, publishing a book on the case in 2026, The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh (Norton), of which the New York Times critic Orlando Whitfield wrote 'Not since "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" have I read so vividly wrought an account of the South', and which was described by Laura Miller in Slate as 'The Truman Capote version of the Murdaugh story.'
With Jonathan Nossiter, Lasdun co-wrote the film Sunday in 1997, based on his story Ate Menos or The Miracle, winning both the Best Feature Award and the Waldo Salt Best Screenplay Award at Sundance. Together they also wrote the next Nossiter film Signs and Wonders in 2000, starring Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard, selected for the official selection of the 50th Berlin International Film Festival in 2000.
His reviews and essays have appeared in Harper's, Granta, the London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New Yorker.
With his wife, Pia Davis, Lasdun has written two guidebooks dedicated to the combined pleasures of walking and eating: one in Tuscany and Umbria, the other in Provence.
He has taught creative writing at Princeton, New York University, the New York State Writers' Institute, the New School, Columbia University and Bennington College.
↑"Book review". The Guardian. London, UK. 29 May 1999. Archived from the original on 14 March 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2016..
↑Annan, Gabriele (9 May 2002). "Who Killed Bogomil Trumilcik?". New York Review of Books. 49 (8). Archived from the original on 28 February 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2014..
