Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw (born 1962) is an English poet and novelist.

Biography
Greenlaw was born in London into a family of doctors and scientists, but spent much of her childhood in a small village in Essex. She read Modern Arts at Kingston Polytechnic, studied at the London College of Printing and has an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute. She has worked as an editor at Imperial College of Science and Technology and for the publishers Allison and Busby. She also worked as an arts administrator for the London Arts Board and the South Bank Centre. In 1994 she embarked upon a career as a freelance artist, critic and radio broadcaster. She has been Writer in Residence at the Science Museum, Reader in Residence at the Royal Festival Hall, and Poet in Residence at a firm of solicitors in London.

She lives in London and currently works as professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She was a judge for the 2010 Manchester Poetry Prize.

Writings
Her work is heavily informed by her interest in science and scientific enquiry, and by themes of displacement, loss and belonging. Critics have noted that her poetry is remarkable in its precision, and that her best poems contain a complexity and elusiveness that lead them to "appreciate with each re-reading".

Awards
Lavinia Greenlaw has been shortlisted for a number of literary awards, including the Whitbread Book Award (now known as the Costa Book Awards) and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. She won the French Prix du Premier Roman for her first novel, Mary George of Allnorthover, and, most notably, the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for "A World Where News Travelled Slowly", the title poem from her second major collection.

Selected works

 * The Cost of Getting Lost in Space, Turret Books, 1991
 * Love from a Foreign City, Slow Dancer Press, 1992, ISBN 978-1-871033-18-2
 * Night Photograph, Faber and Faber, 1993
 * A World Where News Travelled Slowly (poetry), Faber and Faber, 1997
 * Mary George of Allnorthover (novel), Flamingo, 9 July 2001, ISBN 978-0-618-09523-0
 * Minsk (poetry), Faber and Faber, 2003, ISBN 978-0-571-22271-1
 * Thoughts of a Night Sea (Photographs by Garry Fabian Miller), Merrell, 2003
 * An Irresponsible Age, Fourth Estate, 2006, ISBN 978-0-00-715629-0
 * The Importance of Music to Girls, Faber and Faber, 2007, ISBN 978-0-375-17454-4
 * The Casual Perfect (poetry), Faber and Faber, 2011, ISBN 978-0-571-27816-9

Television
In 2011 Greenlaw appeared as a 'talking head' on the BBC documentary Top of the Pops: The Story of 1976.