Collishaw, Stephan 1968-

PERSONAL:

Born 1968, in Nottingham, England; married: children: Lukas, Kristina, Gabriele. Education: Attended Goldsmiths College; M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Colwick, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, England, creative writing instructor.

AWARDS, HONORS:

East Midlands Arts Council bursary for The Last Girl.

WRITINGS:

The Last Girl (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Amber (novel), Sceptre (London, England), 2004.

Contributor to anthologies and magazines, including Believer.

SIDELIGHTS:

British author Stephan Collishaw spent a year living in Lithuania, and that country consequently serves as the backdrop for his novel The Last Girl. The key character is aging poet Steponas Daumantas. During his lifetime, he has seen oppression from Nazi and Communist regimes. In his youth his work was celebrated, but as a man in his seventies he is now an obscure figure who lives a poor existence in the city of Vilnius, drinking vodka and compulsively photographing young Jewish mothers. They remind him of a haunting incident in his past, but he no longer even recalls what it was. Booklist reviewer GraceAnne A. DeCandido found the story somewhat predictable, but nevertheless praised Collishaw's writing as "taut." Julie Myerson offered an enthusiastic assessment of Collishaw's work in a Guardian review, calling The Last Girl "astoundingly complex for a first novel, not just non-autobiographical. The city tenderly drawn feels tense, vivid, effortlessly real." Myerson concluded that The Last Girl "successfully encompasses passion, morality, history and art."

Collishaw was inspired by the experiences of his brother-in-law, who was beaten while in the Soviet Union army, to write his second novel, Amber. In an interview on the BBC Nottingham Web site, the author commented: "I began my new novel soon after I finished writing The Last Girl, in the early spring of 2001." Collishaw went on to note that his brother-in-law "had only been in the army about a month when he was beaten up so badly he was hospitalised and had to be operated on. The medical care that he received was not much better and it ruined his eyesight and affected his brain. He is basically an invalid now." The author continued: "He says he can hear his brain cells popping. He is a lovely boy but basically the brutality of the army broke him." The novel revolves around Antanas, who is brought up without parents in a home in Lithuania and then sent to fight with Soviet troops in Afghanistan at the age of eighteen. Ten years later, Antanas's life is sent into turmoil when a friend and former military comrade tells Antanas that he stole an amber bracelet after a bloody ambush they were on during the war. A contributor to the BBC Nottingham Web page wrote that the book "examines how people get sucked into spirals of brutality. How the brutalized often brutalise others in turn."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2003, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of The Last Girl, p. 1577.

Guardian (London, England), March 22, 2003, Julie Myerson, review of The Last Girl.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2003, review of The Last Girl, p. 551.

Newsweek, May 7, 2004, Ginanne Brownell, review of Amber, p. 61.

Newsweek International, July 21, 2003, brief review of The Last Girl, p. 59; July 5, 2004, Ginanne Brownell, review of Amber, p. 59.

Publishers Weekly, May 5, 2003, Jeff Zaleski, review of The Last Girl, p. 197.

ONLINE

BBC Nottingham Web site,http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/ (December 21, 2006), "Stephan Collishaw Interview"; Zinnia Bhattacharyya, "The Last Girl in Egypt," profile of Stephan Collishaw.

Stephan Collishaw Home Page,http://www.stephancollishaw.com (December 22, 2006).