John Haskell

John Haskell - Picador Guest Professor in the winter semester 2007/08

John Haskell is the author of I Am Not Jackson Pollock (2003) and American Purgatorio (2005). Before, he has worked as an actor and performance artist – for example, with David Mamet at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. John Haskell has studied playwriting at UCLA, and is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Columbia University. Haskell’s work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review and Conjunctions, and his first short-story collection I Am Not Jackson Pollock has received wide literary praise. With his mesmerizing debut novel American Purgatorio Haskell surprised literary critics and readers alike by crossing conventional genre definitions and creating a work of fiction that comes across as literary road movie, detective novel, psycho thriller, and metaphysical quest at the same time. His second novel, Out of My Skin: A Novel (2009), also brought him a lot of praise. His latest novel, The Complete Ballet (2017), brings literature and art together in a dramatic retelling of five romantic ballets interwoven with a contemporary story.