Douglas Coupland

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guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 July 2008 15.39 BST

1961-

"Your 20s are muck and shit and pain and loneliness and horror."

Birthplace

On a Nato base in West Germany as a Canadian citizen.

Education

Studied sculpture in Vancouver and Japanese business science, fine art and industrial design in Japan.

Other jobs

He had early success as a sculptor, and got into journalism when a local editor was amused by a postcard he sent from Japan.

Did you know?

He refuses to own furniture and is an avid meteorite collector.

Critical verdict

A writer with gifted timing: Microserfs (Gates as God in the world of computer programmers) was one of the first reactions to the multimedia boom, while his much-revered Generation X, commissioned as the next Yuppie Handbook and written as a (sort of) novel, caught the 90s mood - though Coupland insisted "I speak for myself, not for a generation. I never have." It received rapturous comparisons - the new Catcher in the Rye, with Coupland his generation's Jack Kerouac - and coined the term 'McJob'. 1998 saw him seize the Lara moment with Lara's Book: Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider Phenomenon, in which video games hit the coffee table.

Recommended works

Microserfs, the jokes and jargon of a group of computer programmers, is his most convincing and illuminating closed world; Girlfriend in a Coma is tender end-of-the-world romance and a blast against apathy. Miss Wyoming is a more conventionally sprawling novel.

Influences

He claims visual art as his "big influence" (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Hurst), evident in his excellent website, www.douglascoupland.com. Admired authors include Truman Capote, Nancy Mitford, Joan Didion, Kurt Vonnegut, John O'Hara and Andy Warhol.