David Mitchell (author)

David Mitchell
David Mitchell in 2006
Born David Stephen Mitchell
(1969-01-12) 12 January 1969
Southport, Lancashire, England
Occupation Novelist
Nationality British
Alma mater University of Kent
Period 1999-present
Notable works Ghostwritten
number9dream
Cloud Atlas
Black Swan Green
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
The Bone Clocks
Slade House
Notable awards John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
1999
Ghostwritten
Spouse Keiko Yoshida
Children 2

David Stephen Mitchell (born 12 January 1969) is an English novelist. He has published seven novels, two of which, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Early life

Mitchell was born in Southport in Lancashire (now Merseyside), England, and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire. He was educated at Hanley Castle High School and at the University of Kent, where he obtained a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.

Mitchell lived in Sicily for a year, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England, where he could live on his earnings as a writer and support his pregnant wife.[1]

Work

Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. The novel won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.[2] His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.[3] In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.[4] In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.[5]

In 2012 his novel Cloud Atlas was made into a film. One segment of number9dream was made into a BAFTA nominated short film in 2011 starring Martin Freeman, titled The Voorman Problem.[6] In recent years he has also written opera libretti. Wake, based on the 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster and with music by Klaas de Vries, was performed by the Dutch Nationale Reisopera in 2010.[7] He has also finished another opera, Sunken Garden, with the Dutch composer Michel van der Aa, which premiered in 2013 by the English National Opera.[8]

Several of Mitchell's book covers were created by design duo Kai and Sunny.[9] Mitchell has also collaborated with the duo, by contributing two short stories to their art exhibits in 2011 and 2014.

Mitchell's sixth novel, The Bone Clocks, was published on 2 September 2014.[10] In an interview in The Spectator, Mitchell said that the novel has "dollops of the fantastic in it", and is about "stuff between life and death".[11] The Bone Clocks was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.[12]

Mitchell was the second author to contribute to the Future Library project and delivered his book From Me Flows What You Call Time on 28 May 2016.[13][14]

Other works

In 2015, Mitchell contributed plotting and scripted scenes for the second season of the Netflix show Sense8.[15] Mitchell had signed a contract to write season three before Netflix cancelled the show.[16] He is credited as a writer on the Sense8 series finale special.[17]

Personal life

After another stint in Japan, Mitchell currently lives with his wife, Keiko Yoshida, and their two children in Ardfield, Clonakilty in County Cork, Ireland. In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote:[18] "I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last six years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself."

Mitchell has the speech disorder of stammering[19] and considers the film The King's Speech (2010) to be one of the most accurate portrayals of what it's like to be a stammerer:[19] "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old."[19] Mitchell is also a patron of the British Stammering Association.[20]

Mitchell's son has autism, and in 2013 he and his wife Keiko Yoshida translated a book written by Naoki Higashida, a 13-year-old Japanese boy with autism, titled The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism.[21] In 2017, Mitchell and his wife translated the follow-up book by Higashida, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism.[22]

List of works

Novels

Short stories

  • "January Man", Granta 81: Best of Young British Novelists, Spring 2003
  • "What You Do Not Know You Want", McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, Vintage Books (Random House), 2004
  • "Acknowledgments", Prospect, 2005
  • "Preface", The Daily Telegraph, April 2006
  • "Dénouement", The Guardian, May 2007
  • "Judith Castle", New York Times, January 2008
  • "An Inside Job", Included in "Fighting Words", edited by Roddy Doyle, published by Stoney Road Press, 2009 (Limited to 150 copies)[23]
  • "The Massive Rat", The Guardian, August 2009
  • "Character Development", The Guardian, September 2009
  • "Muggins Here", The Guardian, August 2010
  • "Earth calling Taylor", Financial Times, December 2010
  • "The Siphoners", Included in "I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet", 2011
  • "The Gardener", in the exhibit "The Flower Show" by Kai and Sunny, 2011 (Limited to 50 copies)
  • "Lots of Bits of Star", in the exhibit "Caught by the Nest" by Kai and Sunny, 2013 (Limited to 50 copies)
  • "Variations on a Theme by Mister Donut", Granta 127: Japan, Spring 2014
  • "The Right Sort", Twitter, 2014
  • "A Forgettable Story", Cathay Pacific Discovery, July 2017

Articles

  • "Japan and my writing", Essay
  • "Enter the Maze", The Guardian, 2004
  • "Kill me or the cat gets it", The Guardian, 2005 (Book review of Kafka on the Shore)
  • "Let me speak", British Stammering Association, 2006
  • "On historical fiction", The Telegraph, 2010
  • "Adventures in Opera", The Guardian, 2010
  • "Imaginary City", Geist, 2010
  • "Lost for words", Prospect Magazine, 2011
  • "Learning to live with my son's autism", The Guardian, 2013
  • "David Mitchell on Earthsea – a rival to Tolkien and George RR Martin", The Guardian, 23 October 2015

Libretto

  • "Wake"
  • "Sunken Garden"

Other

References

  1. ↑ "David Mitchell, The Art of Fiction No. 204", The Paris Review
  2. ↑ Gibbons, Fiachra (1999-11-06). "Readers pick top Guardian books". The Guardian. London.
  3. ↑ "Man Booker Prize Archive". Archived from the original on 6 January 2012.
  4. ↑ Mitchell, D. (2003). "Best of Young British Novelists 2003: The January Man". Granta (81). Archived from the original on 7 September 2012.
  5. ↑ "The Transformative Experience of Writing for "Sense8"". The New Yorker. 2010-05-01. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
  6. ↑ "Link to video".
  7. ↑ David Mitchell (8 May 2010). "Article by Mitchell describing how he became involved in ''Wake''". London: Guardian. Retrieved 2013-08-28.
  8. ↑ "Details of ''Sunken Garden'' from Van der Aa's official website". Vanderaa.net. 2013-06-09. Retrieved 2013-08-28.
  9. ↑ "Kai and Sunny: Publishing"
  10. ↑ "New David Mitchell novel out next autumn". The Bookseller. 2013-11-26. Retrieved 2013-11-28.
  11. ↑ "Interview with a writer: David Mitchell". The Spectator. 2013-01-25. Retrieved 2013-01-27.
  12. ↑ Flood, Alison (2016-05-30). "David Mitchell buries latest manuscript for a hundred years". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-01-21.
  13. ↑ "David Mitchell is the Second Author to Join the Future Library Project of 2114". Tor.com. 2016-05-31. Retrieved 2018-01-21.
  14. ↑ "The Future Library Project: In 100 years, this forest will be harvested to print David Mitchell's latest work". CBC Radio. Retrieved 2018-01-21.
  15. ↑ "'Sense8': Production begins on Netflix special". EW.com. Retrieved 2018-01-21.
  16. ↑ Hemon, Aleksandar (2017-09-27). "The Transformative Experience of Writing for "Sense8"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
  17. ↑ Miller, Liz Shannon. "'Sense8' Series Finale Special: Writers, Potential Locations Revealed | IndieWire". www.indiewire.com. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
  18. ↑ "Bold Type: Essay by David Mitchell". Randomhouse.com. Retrieved 2013-08-28.
  19. 1 2 3 "Lost for words", David Mitchell, Prospect magazine, 23 February 2011, Issue #180
  20. ↑ "Black Swan Green revisited". Speaking Out. British Stammering Association. Spring 2011. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
  21. ↑ Tisdale, Sallie (23 August 2013). "Voice of the Voiceless". New York Times. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
  22. ↑ Doherty, Mike (13 July 2017). "David Mitchell on translating—and learning from—Naoki Higashida". Macleans.
  23. ↑ Day, Elizabeth (11 March 2012). "Roddy Doyle: the joy of teaching children to write". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  24. ↑ "Author David Mitchell on working with 'hero' Kate Bush".
  25. ↑ Fabiana Bianchi (2 October 2017). "Sense8 a Napoli, svelato il titolo dell'attesa puntata finale girata in città". Napolike (in Italian). Archived from the original on 7 October 2017. Retrieved 7 October 2017.
  26. ↑ Aleksandar Hemon (27 September 2017). "The Transformative Experience of Writing for "Sense8"". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Archived from the original on 27 September 2017. Retrieved 27 September 2017.

Sources

  • "The world begins its turn with you, or how David Mitchell's novels think". In B. Schoene. The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
  • Dillon, S. (ed.). David Mitchell: Critical Essays. Kent: Gylphi, 2011.
  • Official website
  • David Mitchell's profile at the official Man Booker Prize site
  • David Mitchell at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  • Adam Begley (Summer 2010). "David Mitchell, The Art of Fiction No. 204". Paris Review.
  • Linklater, A. (2007-09-22). "The author who was forced to learn wordplay". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2007-09-23.
  • David Mitchell - How I Write, Untitled Books, May 2010
  • "Get Writing: Playing With Structure" by David Mitchell at BBC.co
  • "Character Development" by David Mitchell, a short story from The Guardian (2009)
  • "David Mitchell, the Experimentalist", New York Times Magazine, June 2010
  • "The Floating Library: What can't the novelist David Mitchell do?", The New Yorker, 5 July 2010

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