Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer. Their books include 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. Their 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 a range of contemporary artists, including Derek Jarman, Christian Marclay, Agnes Martin, Tilda Swinton, Wolfgang Tillmans and Andy Warhol. They’re the author of two essay collections: Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency and Painting Writing Texting, which charts a decade of collaboration with the artist Chantal Joffe.

The Silver Book, Laing’s second novel, is out now. It’s a queer love story and noirish thriller set in the dream factory of Italian cinema in the 1970s, where nothing is as it seems.

Laing is non-binary and uses they/them.

Books: Bookshop.org

Instagram: @olivialanguage

A short film: Nowness