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, 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 has written catalogue essays on a range of contemporary artists, including David Hockney, 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 1970s Italian cinema, where nothing is as it seems.

A 10th anniversary edition of The Lonely City will be published on 4 June, with a new afterword by the author, a new audiobook read by Tilda Swinton, and a celebratory event at Union Chapel on 23 June.

Laing is non-binary and uses they/them.

Books: Bookshop.org

Instagram: @olivialanguage

A short film: Nowness