James Lasdun – Year of election 2009

James Lasdun’s first book of short stories, The Silver Age (1985), won a Dylan Thomas Award, and was followed by two further collections. His volume of poetry Landscape with Chainsaw (2001) about his boyhood experiences in England and in his adopted America was one of the Times Literary Supplement’s International Books of the Year. His first novel, The Horned Man (2002), was NewYork Times Notable Book of the Year. Lasdun’s most recent collection of short stories, It’s Beginning to Hurt (2009), represents, in the words of one critic, the “best sort of English prose”; his writing “relaxes you, assuring you you're in good hands, while its sensitivity keeps you alert.”