Tom Lutz

Distinguished Professor, UC Riverside
Graduation Year
1989
Dissertation Title
American Nervousness 1903: An Anecdotal History
Tom Lutz

Tom Lutz is Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Creative Writing at University of California at Riverside, and founding editor and publisher of The Los Angeles Review of Books and LARB Books.

He is the author of Portraits, a photographic essay (2022), The Kindness of Strangers (2021), Aimlessness (2021), Born Slippy: A Novel (2020); And the Monkey Learned Nothing: Dispatches from a Life in Transit (2017); Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World: Wandering the Globe from Azerbaijan to Zanzibar (2016); Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums (2008), Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value (2004) Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (1999); and American Nervousness, 1903 (1992), the first draft of which was his MTL thesis. He is the editor of These 'Colored' United States: African American Essays from the 1920s (1996), and some 70 books for LARB and LARB Books. His books have been translated into 12 languages and have been named New York Times Notable Books, a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, and won an American Book Award.

He has published over 100 articles and essays in collections, newspapers, magazines, and literary and academic journals. For LARB he edited and produced 40 print quarterlies, 100 hours of short film, 150 hours of radio and podcasts, and over 3650 daily editions of Los Angeles Review of Books, featuring over 10,000 longform pieces of literary journalism.

He is preparing a new novel, Still Slippy, for publication in 2023, finishing a massive book on the year 1925 in time for the centennial, and working on several other projects. He's planning to retire in 2024, expatriate, and run a literary translation agency with his wife, Laurie Winer.

 

 

 

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