Louis Armand Biography

Louis Armand, (born 1972, Sydney) is a writer, visual artist and critical theorist. He has lived in Prague since 1994. Armand’s work has been described as “Avant-garde […], best appreciated by readers prepared to abandon the baggage of identity-driven poetry and systematically naturalist prose."
He has published eight novels, The Combinations (2016), Cairo (2014; longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award), and Breakfast at Midnight (2012; described by 3:AM's Richard Marshall as "a perfect modern noir"). In addition, he is the author of ten collections of poetry – most recently, East Broadway Rundown (2015) The Rube Goldberg Variations (2015), & Synopticon (with John Kinsella, 2012) – & of a number of volumes of criticism, including Videology (2015) & The Organ-Grinder’s Monkey: Culture after the Avantgarde (2013). His poetry has appeared in the anthologies Thirty Australian Poets, The Best Australian Poems, Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets & The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry.
In 1997 he received the Max Harris prize for poetry at the Penola Festival (Adelaide) and in 2000 he was awarded the Nassau Review Prize (New York). His screenplay Clair Obscur won honourable mention at the 2009 Trieste Film Festival.< In 2004, Armand founded the Prague International Poetry Festival, and since 2009 has co-organised the Prague Microfestival.
He is a member of the editorial board of Rhizomes: Studies in Cultural Knowledge and founding editor (1994) of the online journal HJS (Hypermedia Joyce Studies). He is the founding editor of VLAK Magazine, and directs the Centre for Critical & Cultural Theory at Charles University, Prague.