Louis Armand

Armand’s poems have appeared in Meanjin, Agenda, The Age, Stand, Poetry Review, Verse and Sulfur, as well as The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (ed. John Kinsella 2008), Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets (eds. Michael Brennan and Peter Minter, 2000), and The Best Australian Poems (ed. Peter Rose, 2008). He is author of five volumes of poetry and a number of chapbooks including: Land Partition (2001), Inexorable Weather (2001), Malice in Underland (2003) and Strange Attractors (2003). The Garden, a work of experimental fiction was published in 2001.

Armand’s novels include Clair Obscur (2011); Breakfast at Midnight (2012), critically acclaimed and described by critics as a “twisted, brilliantly savage acid noir” and a “wonderfully executed nod to Kafka’s special brand of disorienting surrealism”; Canicule (2013); Cairo (2014), which was shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize 2014, and, most recently, Abacus (2015).

Armand’s critical and theoretical work has been published in journals such as Ctheory, Triquarterly and Culture Machine. His most recent books include Helixtrolysis: Cyberology & the Joycean “Tyrondynamon Machine” (2014), The Organ Grinder's Monkey (2013),Solicitations: Essays on Criticism & Culture (2008), Event States: Discourse, Time, Mediality (2007) and Contemporary Poetics (2007).

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 2013, Breakfast at Midnight was translated into Czech by David Vichnar and published by Argo Press.

Snídaně o půlnoci (trans. David Vichnar; Prague: Argo, 2013)

Hidden Agendas Unreported Poetics ed. Louis Armand. Prague: Charles Univ., 2010.

Hypermedia Joyce eds. David Vichnar & Louis Armand. Prague: Charles Univ., 2010.

Event States: Discourse, Time, Mediality. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2007.

Contemporary Poetics. Ed. Louis Armand. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007.

Language Systems: After Prague Structuralism. Ed. Louis Armand with Pavel Černovsky. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2007.

Literate Technologies: Language, Cognition, Technicity. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006.

Avant-Post. Ed. Louis Armand. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006.

Giacomo Joyce: Envoys of the Other. Eds. Louis Armand & Clare Wallace. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006. (2nd edition)

Technicity. Eds. Louis Armand and Arthur Bradley. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2006.

Incendiary Devices: Discourses of the Other. Prague: Karolinum Press/Charles University Press, 2005/6.

Solicitations: Essays on Criticism & Culture. (First edition 2005) Expanded and revised edition, Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2008.

Mind Factory. Ed. Louis Armand. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2005.

JoyceMedia: James Joyce, Genetics and Hypermedia. Ed. Louis Armand. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2004.

Southern: 10 Contemporary Australian Artists, Home Gallery (2004) co-curator

Strange Attractors. Cambridge: Salt Publications, 2003.

Techne: James Joyce, Hypertext & Technology. Prague: Karolinum Press/Charles University Press, 2003.

Night Joyce of a Thousand Tiers. Petr Škrabánek: Studies in Finnegans Wake. Eds. Louis Armand & Ondrej Pilny. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2002.

Land Partition. Melbourne: Textbase Publications, 2001.

Base Materialism. New York: x-poezie, 2001. (chapbook)

Inexorable Weather. Todmorden, Lancs. (UK): Arc Publications, 2001.

Erosions. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 1999. (chapbook)

Anatomy Lessons. New York: x-poezie, 1999. (chapbook)

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.

The Return of Kral Majales Prague's International Literary Renaissance 1990–2010 An Anthology ed. Louis Armand. Prague: Charles Univ., 2010.

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."