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Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst at the 2011 Texas Book Festival
Born	(1954-05-26) 26 May 1954 (age 70) Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Writer, translator
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford (BA, MLitt)
Period	1975–
Genre	Novel, poem, short story
Notable works	The Swimming Pool Library The Folding Star The Spell The Line of Beauty The Stranger's Child The Sparsholt Affair
Notable awards	Newdigate Prize 1974 Stonewall Book Award 1989 Somerset Maugham Award 1989 James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1994 Booker Prize 2004

Alan James Hollinghurst FRSL (born 26 May 1954) is an English novelist, poet, short story writer and translator. He won the 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, the 1994 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 2004 Booker Prize.

Early life and education

Hollinghurst was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, only child of bank manager James Hollinghurst, who served in the RAF in the Second World War, and his wife, Elizabeth. He attended Dorset's Canford School.

He studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving a BA in 1975 and MLitt in 1979. His thesis was on works by three gay writers: Firbank, Forster and Hartley. He house-shared with future poet laureate Andrew Motion at Oxford, and was awarded poetry's Newdigate Prize, a year before Motion. In the late 1970s he lectured at Magdalen, then at Somerville and Corpus Christi. In 1981 he lectured at UCL, and in 1982 joined The Times Literary Supplement, serving as deputy editor: 1985–90.

Writing

Hollinghurst discussed his early life and literary influences at length in a rare interview at home in London, published in The James White Review in 1997–98.

He won the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. His next novel, The Stranger's Child, made the 2011 Booker Prize longlist.

List of works

Poetry

• Isherwood is at Santa Monica (Sycamore Broadsheet 22: two poems, hand-printed on a single folded sheet), Oxford: Sycamore Press 1975
• Poetry Introduction 4 (ten poems: "Over the Wall", "Nightfall", "Survey", "Christmas Day at Home", "The Drowned Field", "Alonso", "Isherwood is at Santa Monica", "Ben Dancing at Wayland's Smithy", "Convalescence in Lower Largo", "The Well"), Faber and Faber, 1978 ISBN 978-0571111435
• Confidential Chats with Boys, Oxford: Sycamore Press 1982 (based on the book Confidential Chats with Boys by William Lee Howard, MD., 1911, Sydney, Australia)
• "Mud" (London Review of Books, Vol. 4, No. 19, 21 October 1982)

Short stories

• A Thieving Boy (Firebird 2: Writing Today, Penguin, 1983)
• Sharps and Flats (Granta 43, 1993), was incorporated into Hollinghurst's second novel, The Folding Star
• Highlights (Granta 100, 2007)

Novels

• The Swimming-Pool Library, 1988 ISBN 978-0679722564
• The Folding Star, 1994 ISBN 978-0099476917
• The Spell, 1998 ISBN 978-0099276944
• The Line of Beauty, 2004 ISBN 978-0330483216
• The Stranger's Child, 2011 ISBN 978-0330483278
• The Sparsholt Affair, 2017 ISBN 978-1447208228

Translations

• Bajazet by Jean Racine, Chatto & Windus, 1991 ISBN 978-0701138530
• Bérénice and Bajazet by Jean Racine, Faber and Faber, 2012 ISBN 978-0571299089

As editor

• New Writing 4 (with A. S. Byatt), 1995 ISBN 978-0099532316
• A. E. Housman: poems selected by Alan Hollinghurst, Faber and Faber, 2001 ISBN 978-0571207053

Foreword

• Three Novels by Ronald Firbank, 2000 ISBN 978-0141182193

Awards and honours

• 1974: Newdigate Prize
• 1989: Somerset Maugham Award, for The Swimming Pool Library
• 1994: James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for The Folding Star
• 2004: Booker Prize, for The Line of Beauty
• 2011: Booker Prize, longlist for The Stranger's Child
• 2011: Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle

Personal life

Hollinghurst is gay and lives in London. Although he now lives with his partner Paul Mendez, Hollinghurst previously said: "I'm not at all easy to live with. I wish I could integrate writing into ordinary social life, but I don't seem to be able to. I could when I started . I suppose I had more energy then. Now I have to isolate myself for long periods."

References

1. ^ Moss, Stephen (21 October 2004). "'I Don't Make Moral Judgments': Interview with Alan Hollinghurst, winner of the 2004 Booker prize". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Much as Chris Smith, the chairman of the Booker judges, tries to gainsay the fact, Hollinghurst is a gay novelist. This is a gay novel.
2. Harvey, Giles (14 March 2018). "The Evolution of One of Fiction's Gay Liberators". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 3 April 2018.
3. Tonkin, Boyd; Jury, Louise (20 October 2004). "A beautiful victory at the Booker for tale of gay love in Thatcherite". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 4 April 2018.
4. Andrew Anthony, "Alan Hollinghurst: The slow-motion novelist delivers", The Guardian, 11 June 2011.
5. Rose, Peter (14 May 2005). "The Hollinghurst line". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 4 December 2013.
6. "About.com". Contemporarylit.about.com. 13 November 2013. Retrieved 4 December 2013.
7. "Hollinghurst's rise to Booker glory". BBC News. 19 October 2004. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
8. Johnson, Allan (2014). Alan Hollinghurst and the Vitality of Influence. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 62. ISBN 978-1349472505.
9. Galligan, David. "Beneath the Surface of The Swimming-Pool Library: An Interview with Alan Hollinghurst", The James White Review 14.3 (Fall 1997): 1–7, ; and "On Hampstead Heath: An Interview with Alan Hollinghurst", The James White Review 15.1 (Winter 1998): 10–13.
10. ^ "Alan Hollinghurst wins prestigious Booker Prize". The Advocate. 21 October 2004. Retrieved 8 February 2015. Out British author Alan Hollinghurst has won the Booker Prize...
11. ^ "Man Booker Prize 2011 longlist announced". The Booker Prize Foundation. Archived from the original on 18 February 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2011.
12. "Isherwood is at Santa Monica". Archived from the original on 29 October 2022.
13. Mendelssohn, Michèle (2016). "Poetry, Parody, Porn and Prose". Alan Hollinghurst: Writing Under the Influence: 40–45. doi:10.7228/manchester/9780719097171.003.0004. ISBN 9781526100351 – via Manchester University Press.
14. Hollinghurst, Alan (21 October 1982). "Mud". London Review of Books.
15. Dodson, Ed. "Sexuality, race and empire in Alan Hollinghurst's 'A Thieving Boy' (1983)". Through a 'contrapuntal' analysis of his 1983 Egyptian short story 'A Thieving Boy', the article complicates dominant 'queer' interpretations which overlook the postimperial politics - the aesthetic negotiation of Britain after empire - at stake in his representations of race and nation.
16. Hollinghurst, Alan (1 July 1993). "Sharps and flats". Granta.
17. Hollinghurst, Alan (7 January 2008). "Highlights". Granta.
18. Hahn, Lorraine (11 May 2005). "Alan Hollinghurst TalkAsia Interview Transcript". TalkAsia. CNN. Retrieved 28 January 2009. I only chafe at the 'gay writer' tag if it's thought to describe everything that's interesting about my books.
19. Tillyard, Stella (November 2005). "Interview: Alan Hollinghurst". Prospect. Retrieved 28 January 2009.
20. Law, Katie (28 April 2020). "From Jehovah's Witness to gay sex worker to novelist: the extraordinary life story of Paul Mendez". Evening Standard. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
21. Gekoski, Rick (7 July 2011). "Writing is bad for you". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 July 2011.

External links

• An Interview at the Oxonian Review
• Alan Hollinghurst at British Council: Literature includes a "Critical Perspective" section
• Alan Hollinghurst at The New York Review of Books
• Alan Hollinghust Profile in The Guardian
• 2011 radio interview at The Bat Segundo Show
• Peter Terzian (Winter 2011). "Alan Hollinghurst, The Art of Fiction No. 214". The Paris Review. Winter 2011 (199).

• 1954 births
• Living people
• Academics of University College London
• Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford
• Booker Prize winners
• English gay writers
• English LGBT novelists
• English LGBT poets
• English male non-fiction writers
• English male novelists
• English male poets
• English male short story writers
• English translators
• Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
• Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford
• Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford
• Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients
• Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction winners
• Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction winners
• People educated at Canford School
• People from Stroud
• Stonewall Book Award winners
• 20th-century British short story writers
• 20th-century British translators
• 20th-century English male writers
• 20th-century English novelists
• 20th-century LGBT people
• 21st-century British novelists
• 21st-century British short story writers
• 21st-century British translators
• 21st-century English male writers
• 21st-century LGBT people
• University of Houston faculty