Author Douglas Coupland was born on this day in 1961
Canadian author, designer and visual artist Douglas Coupland was born on this day in 1961.
As an author he found instant success in 1991 with his first novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. The novel which popularized the terms ‘Gen X’ and ‘McJob’, follows a group of youths who share stories about their lives, alongside fantastical stories that they’ve made up.
Coupland has gone on to write thirteen novels, two short story collections, seven non-fiction books, and countless articles for magazines and newspapers. He has also created several exhibitions, given many notable lectures and written the screenplay for the 2006 film Everything’s Gone Green.
Among Coupland’s novels are Shampoo Planet (1992), Microserfs (1995), Girlfriend in a Coma (1998), Miss Wyoming (2000), All Families are Psychotic (2001), Hey Nostradamus (2003), Eleanor Rigby (2004), jPod (2006), The Gum Thief (2007), Generation A (2009), Player One (2010) and Worst. Person. Ever. (2013).
His 2006 novel jPod was adapted as a television series. The series featured actor Sherry Miller from Queer as Folk and Growing Pains alum Alan Thicke as the lead character’s parents.
While he published books consistently for over 20 years, Coupland has not released any new novels for over a decade.
In recent years Coupland has explored his work as a designer, earlier this year he presented an exhibition of images inspired by Girlfriend in a Coma. He also collaborated with fashion house Valentino and designer Pierpaolo Piccioli for a book all about the colour pink.
He also released Binge in 2021 a collection of very short stories, described as micro-fiction. The books featured many different characters including non-binary and gender fluid narrators.
Coupland has shared that he is gay but has rarely spoken about his sexuality or personal life.
Image of Douglas Coupland from Wikipedia (The Wyle Corporation) published under a Creative Commons license BY-SA-4.0. Image has been cropped and combined with an image of the authors works.
