Brian Dillon was born in Dublin in 1969. His books include  Affinities,  Suppose a Sentence,  Essayism,  The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize),  Objects in This Mirror: Essays,  I Am Sitting in a Room,  Sanctuary,  Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and  In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the  Guardian,  New York Times,  London Review of Books, the  New Yorker,  New York Review of Books,  frieze and  Artforum. He has curated exhibitions for Tate and Hayward galleries. He lives in London.