Andrew O'Hagan

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Andrew O'Hagan
File:Andrewohagan09 flipped.jpg
Andrew O'Hagan, July 2009
Born 1968
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Occupation Novelist, journalist
Nationality United Kingdom

Andrew O'Hagan, FRSL (born 1968)[1] is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. He is also an Editor at Large of Esquire , London Review of Books & Critic at large for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Andrew is currently a creative writing fellow at King's College London.[2]

O'Hagan was selected by the literary magazine Granta[3] for inclusion in their 2003 list of the top 20 young British novelists. His novels have been translated into 15 languages. His essays, reports and stories have appeared in London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, Granta, The Guardian and The New Yorker.[4]

Life

Early life

O'Hagan was born in Glasgow, and grew up in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire. He is of Irish Catholic descent and attended St Michael's Academy in Kilwinning before studying at the University of Strathclyde.[5]

Writings

In 1991, O'Hagan joined the staff of the London Review of Books, where he worked for four years.[6] In 1995, he published his first book, The Missing, which crossed genres by exploring the lives of people who have gone missing in Britain and the families left behind. The Missing was shortlisted for three literary awards. In 1999, O'Hagan's debut novel, Our Fathers (1999), was nominated for several awards, including the Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the IMPAC Literary Award. It won the Winifred Holtby Prize for Fiction.

In 2003, his next novel Personality, which has close similarities to the life of Lena Zavaroni, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. That same year, O'Hagan won the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[7]

In 2006, his third novel, Be Near Me, was published by Faber and Faber and long-listed for that year's Booker Prize. It went on to win the Los Angeles Times's 2008 Prize for Fiction. In 2008, he edited a new selection of Robert Burns's poems for Canongate Books, published as A Night Out with Robert Burns. A copy was lodged in every secondary school in Scotland. Following on from this, he wrote and presented a three-part film on Burns for the BBC, The World According to Robert Burns, first on 5 January 2009. In January 2011, Scotland on Sunday gave away 80,000 copies of the book. Also in 2008, Faber & Faber also published O'Hagan's first non-fiction collection, The Atlantic Ocean: Essays on Britain and America. The latter was shortlisted for the 2008 Saltire Book of the Year Award.[8]

His 2010 novel, The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe,[9] is told in the voice of a Scottish Maltese poodle ("Maf"), the name of the real dog given by Frank Sinatra to Marilyn Monroe in 1960. It was published by Faber & Faber in May 2010 and won O'Hagan a Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award.

In March 2012, it was announced that O'Hagan is working on a theatrical production about the crisis in British newspapers, entitled Enquirer with the National Theatre of Scotland.[10]

Adaptations

Three of O'Hagan's books have received adaptations into different media. In 1996, Channel 4 Television presented Calling Bible John: Portrait of a Serial Killer, nominated for a BAFTA award.[1][11] In 2009, his novel Be Near Me was adapted by Ian McDiarmid for the Donmar Warehouse and the National Theatre of Scotland.

In September 2011, the National Theatre of Scotland presented The Missing as a play adapted by O'Hagan and directed by John Tiffany at Tramway, Glasgow.[12] The play received favourable reviews. The Daily Telegraph called it "a profound act of mourning and memory."[13] The Guardian called the work "an arresting, genre-defying work – part speculative memoir, part Orwellian social reportage" that "induces the kind of shock he [the author] must have experienced..."[14]

Other activities

In 2008, O'Hagan was a visiting fellow in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin.

Works

He is represented by Rogers, Coleridge & White (literary work) and Casarotto Ramsay & Associates Ltd.

Fiction books

  • Our Fathers, 1999
  • Personality, 2003
  • Be Near Me, 2006
  • The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe, 2010
  • The Illuminations, 2015

Non-fiction books

  • The Missing, 1995
  • The Atlantic Ocean: Essays, 2008

Other writings

Relationship with Julian Assange

In February 2014, O'Hagan wrote about his experience as a ghostwriter for Julian Assange's autobiography by Canongate and Knopf. His essay, entitled "Ghosting" which was published in the London Review of Books garnered significant media attention due to his description of Assange's character and his strained relationships with his past and present colleagues.[18][19][20]

Awards

The British Council lists the following awards and nominations for O'Hagan's work:[1]

  • 1995 – Esquire Award for The Missing (shortlist)
  • 1995 – McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year for The Missing (shortlist)
  • 1995 – Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award for The Missing (shortlist)
  • 1996 – BAFTA, Calling Bible John (winner)
  • 1999 – Booker Prize for Fiction for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 1999 – Whitbread First Novel Award for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 2000 – Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 2000 – Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for Our Fathers (winner)
  • 2001 – International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Our Fathers (shortlist)
  • 2003 – James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), Personality (winner)
  • 2010 – Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for Writing (winner)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ [1]
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  6. ↑ London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 12, 16 June 2011, pp. 23–28.
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  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/ghostwriter-calls-assange-mercurial-character-who-could-not-bear-his-own-secrets-114022200302_1.html

External links

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