Olivia Laing

Oliver Laing is a British cultural critic, novelist, and writer best known for the novel “Crudo” that she published in 2018. Before she became a fiction author she had written several non-fiction works that included “The Lonely City,” “The Trip to Echo Spring,” and “To the River.” In 2018, she was the winner of the Literature nonfiction prize by Windham-Campbell. Her debut fiction work “Crudo was the winner of the 100th James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2019. Olivia was brought up in St. Peter, Buckinghamshire in Chalfont and went to Sussex University to study English. However, she did not finish as she became involved in social protests and started living wild in the Sussex countryside. Between 2007 and 2009, she worked at The Observer as a Deputy Books Editor. She was also a culture and art critic for several publications including New Statesman, Frieze, and The Guardian. Olivia has also written catalog essays for a variety of modern artists such as Andy Warhol, Derek Jarman, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Chantal Joffe.