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 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, 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, Choice Outstanding Academic Titles, and received the American Book Award.

He has published over 100 articles and essays in collections, newspapers, magazines, and literary and academic journals. For LARB he has edited and produced 40 print quarterlies, 100 hours of short film, 150 hours of radio and podcasts, and over 3000 daily editions of Los Angeles Review of Books, featuring over 6,000 longform pieces of literary journalism.

He is finishing a third collection of travel pieces, a book on the 1920s, a book on the global conflict along the aridity line, and a short book for Columbia UP on aimlessness. He has written a dozen screenplays and pilots, and his latest historical drama TV series pilot and bible is under contract with a Los Angeles production company.