about me

James Lark has worked extensively as a writer and musician for several years, combining both in his work for theatre which includes Io Theatre Company's adaptation of 'The Snow Spider', original musicals 'Miracles at Short Notice' and 'Tony Blair – the Musical'. He has co-written and directed internet dramas 'Degrees of Separation' and 'The Sitcom' ("if you haven't already watched it you absolutely must" - The Guardian) and several short films, most recently 'Purgatory', 'Beach' and 'Hide and Seek' and 'Summer's End' (which won an Andrew Cross Award in 2006) as well as a couple of features which are now gathering dust pending a weighty contract from anyone who cares to make them.

His other writing ranges from prose to plays, song lyrics, sketches, monologues and scripts for radio and film; he co-wrote 'Fringe', a complete guide to the Edinburgh Fringe published by Friday Books, and has written and performed several character monologues for BBC Radio, one of which won a Jerusalem Radio Award in 2004. Since learning many things about writing comedy in the Cambridge Footlights Dramatic Club he has written for Ealing Live!, Focus Theatre Company and The Friday Thing, as well as co-founding improvisation company The Uncertainty Division, which has involved surprisingly little writing.

James also wrote this biog. He did it in the third person because that is generally how his biog has been required and, being of a slightly lazy disposition, he cut and paste a lot of it. He apologises for any confusion this has caused, including any doubts about the nature of his existence; he is, he promises, a real person.

He is delighted that his novel 'More Tea, Jesus?' has been chosen for the Authonomy digital imprint less (though not much less) than ten years since he started writing it and he is sorry to have taken it down from this website but to be honest when he re-read it there were bits (only bits, mind) that embarrassed him (usually due to a surfeit of pretension), so he is performing a necessary rewrite. He promises that once this is dealt with he will do a bit of rewriting about his lengthy, dispiriting and ultimately successful attempts to get it published, in order to satisfy curiosity and popular demand - you'll be able to read about it at www.talktorex.co.uk

In the meantime, in case people are interested in seeing what his writing is like when he's not talking about himself, he is going to start putting his second novel 'The Broomby Symphony' up on the site, a story which in spite of the lack of Jesus some would consider less commercial than the first.

Even so, he hopes you like it.

favourite books

David Mitchell - Black Swan Green
Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections
William Burroughs - Cities of the Red Night
James Joyce - Dubliners
Michael Frayn - Towards the End of the Morning
Patricia Highsmith - Ripley Underground
Anything by Dickens
Anything by Saki
Plus an awful lot of P. G. Wodehouse

my websites

http://www.jameslark.co.uk     http://www.talktorex.co.uk