Victor LaValle

Victor LaValle (born February 3, 1972) is an American author. He is the author of a short-story collection, Slapboxing with Jesus, and five novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, The Changeling, and Lone Women. His fantasy-horror novella The Ballad of Black Tom won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for best novella. LaValle writes primarily fiction, though he has also written essays and book reviews for GQ, Essence, The Fader, and The Washington Post.

Early life Victor LaValle was born on February 3, 1972, and raised in the Flushing and Rosedale neighborhoods of Queens, New York, by a single mother who had emigrated from Uganda in her twenties. He attended Woodmere Academy and received a degree in English from Cornell University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University.

Career Slapboxing with Jesus was published in 1999 by Vintage Books. The eleven interconnected stories deal mostly with the lives of young Black and Latino men living in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. The collection received wide critical praise. It won a PEN Open Book Award and LaValle received a key to Jamaica, Queens.

The Ecstatic was published in 2002 by Crown Publishing Group. The novel continues the story of Anthony James, a character from Slapboxing with Jesus. Anthony is an unhealthy college dropout who is experiencing the first signs of schizophrenia. The novel follows him and his family, who are trying their best to save Anthony, but who have their own issues. The book also received wide critical acclaim, earning comparisons to the work of Ken Kesey, Chester Himes, and John Kennedy Toole. In 2003, the novel was a finalist for both the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It is a favorite novel of rapper Mos Def, who later titled his 2009 studio album after it.

Big Machine was published in 2009 by Spiegel & Grau. The novel tells the story of Ricky Rice, a recovering drug addict and survivor of a suicide cult who receives a mysterious letter summoning him to a remote compound in Vermont. The novel was widely praised upon its release, making several national top ten lists. It also won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel in 2009, as well as the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and an American Book Award in 2010.

The Devil in Silver, published by Spiegel & Grau in 2012, is the story of Pepper, a mentally well man sent for observation to a psychiatric hospital. There he encounters a monster known as the Devil roaming the halls at night. He teams up with other patients to fight the staff and the monster. It was named as a best book of the year by several outlets. It has been adapted into the third season of the TV anthology series The Terror, set to premiere in 2026.

The Ballad of Black Tom, a novella, was published by Tor Books on February 16, 2016. It is a retelling of the H. P. Lovecraft story "The Horror at Red Hook" from the point of view of a young Black man living in Harlem.

The Changeling was published in 2017 by Spiegel & Grau and received critical acclaim. It was selected as one of 2017's ten best books by New York Public Library and won the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, the 2018 Locus Award for Horror Novel, and the 2018 British Fantasy Award for Horror Novel. It was adapted into a TV series of the same name on Apple TV in 2023.

Destroyer, a graphic novel published in 2017 by Boom! Studios, is a modern retelling of Frankenstein (1818). The story follows an African-American descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, her only son who was killed in a police encounter, and the monster from the original novel.

Lone Women, a novel published in 2023 by One World, is a fantasy horror western set in 1915. The story follows protagonist Adelaide Henry, a single woman who leaves her family farm in California to establish a homestead in Montana.

LaValle is an associate professor at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

Personal life He lives in New York with his wife, novelist Emily Raboteau, and their son and daughter.

Awards and nominations

Literature awards + Year Nominee Award Category Result Ref 2002 Slapboxing with Jesus PEN/Open Book Award — (co-winner) Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Fiction 2009

Shirley Jackson Award Novel

American Book Awards — (co-winner) 2013 The Devil in Silver Shirley Jackson Award Novel

British Fantasy Award Novella Locus Award Novella 2004: Whiting Award for Fiction 2006: United States Artists Ford Fellowship 2010: Guggenheim Fellowship 2011: Dutch Foundation for Literature Writers' Residency

Works

Books

As editor

Essays

Comics