Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. They’re the author of eight books, including The Lonely City, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller, The Garden Against Time. Laing’s first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. They’re a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts, and in 2018 were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Laing’s books have been translated into twenty-one languages.

Laing writes on art and culture for the Guardian, Financial Times and New York Times, among many other publications. They’ve written catalogue essays on various contemporary artists, including Derek Jarman, Christian Marclay, Agnes Martin, Tilda Swinton, Wolfgang Tillmans and Andy Warhol. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency was published in 2020 and Painting Writing Texting, Laing’s decade of collaboration with the artist Chantal Joffe, in 2025.

The Silver Book will be published in November 2025 by Hamish Hamilton in the UK, FSG in the US and Il Saggiatore in Italy. It’s a queer love story and a noirish thriller set in the dream factory of Italian cinema in the 1970s, where nothing is as it seems. Pre-order here.

Laing is non-binary.

Books: Bookshop.org

Instagram: @olivialanguage

A short film: Nowness