Siddhesh Joshi (Editor)

Victoria Lautman

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Name
  
Victoria Lautman

Role
  
Journalist

Books
  
The New Tattoo


Victoria Lautman Victoria Lautman Journalist Author Lecturer

Education
  
George Washington University, Merton College, Oxford

Victoria Lautman & Dr Bhavita Saxena visits at Chitkara University


Victoria Lautman is a Chicago-based broadcast journalist, writer, interviewer and lecturer. Her focus is on all forms of art and culture, including architecture, design, and literature, and she frequently writes and speaks about India. Her book, The Vanishing Stepwells of India, was published by Merrell Publishers (London) in 2017.

Victoria Lautman American journalist Victoria Lautmans quest to find Indias

Lautman received an M.A. in art history from George Washington University, and a B.A. in anthropology and art history from the University of New Mexico. She attended Merton College at Oxford University for archaeological field training, and following graduate school was employed by the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Lautman worked at the National Public Radio outlet in Chicago, WBEZ, beginning in 1984 as a weekly arts reviewer. During the next two decades she founded and hosted a long-running arts and culture magazine, Artistic License, and then went on to be a regular interviewer and contributor to the station. In 2004, she moved to WFMT radio and created the Chicago author-interview series, Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman, which featured a range of renowned authors including Junot Diaz, Edward P. Jones, Elizabeth Strout, Louise Erdrich, Frank McCourt, Michael Cunningham, Augusten Burroughs, Edwidge Danticat, Peter Carey, Anne Lamott, Martin Amis, Russell Banks, Richard Price, Mary Gaitskill, and others (many of these interviews are available at www.victorialautman.com). Lautman's interviews with Jonathan Lethem, Lady Antonia Fraser, Amitav Ghosh, and others have also been heard at the Chicago Humanities festival.

As a print journalist, Lautman has written for a wide array of national and international publications, and was formerly the Chicago editor for the magazines Metropolitan Home, Art+Auction, Architectural Record, and House & Garden.

Lautman became fascinated with the ancient - and largely unknown - subterranean stepwells of India after encountering one on her first trip to the country in the early 1980's. Decades later, the interest became a passion that she pursued in earnest, spending several months each year finding and photographing the dilapidated structures throughout the country. This body of work eventually led to the publication in March 2017 of The Vanishing Stepwells of India (Merrell publishers, London). Lautman's earlier non-fiction book, The New Tattoo, was published by Abbeville Press in 1994.

  • [http://www.merrellpublishers.com/?9781858946580
  • [http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/April-2017/The-Vanishing-Stepwells-of-India-Victoria-Lautman/
  • Personal Web Site
  • [1]
  • [2]
  • [3]
  • References

    Victoria Lautman Wikipedia