Graham William Joyce
Birth date22 October 1954
Death date9 September 2014 (aged 59)
Birth placeKeresley, England
OccupationWriter and teacher
GenreSpeculative Fiction
Websitegrahamjoyce.co.uk

Graham William Joyce (22 October 1954 – 9 September 2014) was a British writer of speculative fiction and the recipient of numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award, the World Fantasy Award, and six times the British Fantasy Award for both his novels and short stories.[1][2]

Biography

The son of a working-class parents, Joyce grew up in Keresley, a small mining village just outside Coventry, before moving to live in Leicester.[3] In interview, he speaks of the influence of the woods and countryside of his childhood, woods which, he later discovered, were among the last remaining parts of the Forest of Arden.[4]

Joyce names his grandmother as an early influence; a woman who spoke of seeing ghosts and whose strong personality inspires several of the women characters in his books. He says in interview: 'It’s true that I have been surrounded by strong women. As I grew up I spent a lot of my time with my grandmother and also with my five aunts, all of whom were very strong-willed and opinionated!'[5]

Joyce received a BEd degree from Bishop Lonsdale College in 1977 (now University of Derby) and an M.A. degree in Modern English and American Literature[6] from the University of Leicester in 1980,[7] Joyce worked as a youth officer for the National Association of Youth Clubs until 1988, when he and his wife Suzanne moved to the Greek islands of Lesbos and Crete, during which time Joyce wrote his first novel, Dreamside.[8][9]

After selling Dreamside to Pan Books in 1991, Joyce moved back to England to pursue a career as a writer. He was awarded a PhD degree by publication at Nottingham Trent University, where he taught creative writing from 1996 until his death and was made a reader in creative writing.[10]

Joyce was a strong supporter of children's education and literacy, and in 2014 spearheaded a petition signed by more than 100,000 people to remove Michael Gove from office over his changes to the English literature GCSE syllabus, telling The Guardian: "Michael Gove climbs on tables and gleefully tears the wings from mockingbirds as his coterie of supporters looks on with immobilised grins, knowing there is no one around with the power or the will to stop him."[11]

In 2011, in a piece for The Guardian, he spoke against the 'cultural elitism' of those who equate readability with 'dumbing down', following an attack by Jeanette Winterson on the Booker Prize shortlist.[12]

Joyce was the regular first-choice goalkeeper for the England Writers football team, appearing in international fixtures against Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Israel, Hungary, Turkey and Austrian Writers teams. He described his footballing experiences in his non-fiction book Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular.[13]

He was a supporter of Coventry City FC and occasionally wrote pieces for fanzines.[14]

Joyce died on 9 September 2014. He had been diagnosed with Mantle Cell lymphoma in 2013.[15] Joyce's reaction to his cancer was to publish several essays on the "shocking clarity" the news had brought him on the subject of death. He said "your life is suddenly propelled along a remorseless narrative that has the structure of all great mythical journeys".[16]

Graham Joyce lived in Wistow, near Leicester, with his wife and their two children.[17]

Style and themes

Bill Sheehan, who wrote the introduction for Partial Eclipse, states:

American author, editor and literary critic Jeff VanderMeer said:

Joyce published Memoirs of a Master Forger under a pseudonym, William Heaney. He told the Guardian that because it was 'a book about forged manuscripts, faked personalities and literary hoaxes ... it seemed like a fun way of doing it.'[18]Some critics classify Joyce as a magic realist in the vein of such Latin American writers as Gabriel García Márquez or Julio Cortázar. Joyce disagrees with this, feeling that his lineage is tied more closely to writers of the English "weird tale" such as Arthur Machen or Algernon Blackwood. He calls his style of writing "Old Peculiar."[19]

Film

The short film Black Dust was released in 2012, produced by James Laws of Pretzel Films, scripted by Joyce and Laws. Currently, there are no feature-length films based on Joyce's novels or shorts. However, the film rights to Dreamside, The Tooth Fairy, and Dark Sister have all been optioned, as have Do the Creepy Thing, The Silent Land[20] and Some Kind of Fairy Tale.

Music

Joyce co-wrote song lyrics for French songwriter and composer Emilie Simon on her albums The Big Machine (2009) and Franky Knight (2011).[21]

Games

On 16 January 2009, the site Computer and Video Games reported that Graham Joyce had been hired by id Software to "help develop the storyline potential"[22] of Doom 4; after Joyce died in 2014, Adam Gascoine was brought in as a replacement.[23]

Critical reception

Adam Roberts stated "Graham Joyce's The Year of the Ladybird showed that he is one of the best writers of ghost stories we have."[24] Josh Lacey of The Guardian ranked him alongside Philip Pullman, Angela Carter, and Jonathan Carroll as part of a 'small group of fascinating writers... who pursue adult themes and ideas without shedding childhood fears and obsessions.'[25]

Bibliography

According to his official site and the Internet Database of Speculative Fiction, Graham Joyce published fourteen novels and twenty-six short stories.[26]

Novels and short story collections

NamePublishedISBNNotes
Dreamside1991ISBN 978-0-312-87546-6
Dark Sister1992ISBN 978-0-312-87254-0British Fantasy Award winner, 1993[27]
House of Lost Dreams1993ISBN 978-0-7472-4248-2
Requiem1995ISBN 978-0-312-86452-1British Fantasy Award winner, 1996;[28]
World Fantasy Award nominee, 1996[28]
The Tooth Fairy1996ISBN 978-0-312-86833-8British Fantasy Award winner, 1997[29]
The Stormwatcher1997ISBN 978-1-892389-36-7British Fantasy Award nominee, 1999[30]
The Web: Spiderbite1997ISBN 978-1-85881-527-5young adult
Indigo1999ISBN 978-0-671-03937-0British Fantasy Award winner, 2000[31]
Smoking Poppy2001ISBN 978-0-671-03939-4British Fantasy Award nominee, 2002[32]
The Facts of Life2002ISBN 978-0-7434-6342-3World Fantasy Award winner, 2003;[33]
British Fantasy Award nominee, 2003[33]
Partial Eclipse and Other Stories2003ISBN 978-1-931081-62-7collection
The Limits of Enchantment2005ISBN 978-0-7434-6344-7World Fantasy Award nominee, 2006[34]
TWOC2005ISBN 978-0-571-22513-2young adult; Angus Award "winner"
Do the Creepy Thing2006ISBN 978-0-571-23035-8young adult;
released in the US as The Exchange (2008) ISBN 978-0-670-06207-2
Three Ways to Snog an Alien2008ISBN 978-0-571-23951-1young adult
Memoirs of a Master Forger2008ISBN 978-0-575-08297-7as William Heaney;
released in the US as How to Make Friends with Demons (2009) ISBN 978-1-59780-142-3 British Fantasy Award winner
The Devil's Ladder2009ISBN 978-0-571-24247-4young adult
The Silent Land2010ISBN 978-0-385-53380-5World Fantasy Award nominee, 2011;[35]
British Fantasy Award nominee, 2011[36]
Some Kind of Fairy Tale2012ISBN 978-0-385-53578-6British Fantasy Novel award winner, 2013[37]
The Year of the Ladybird2013ISBN 978-0-575-11531-6released in the US in 2014 as The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit
25 Years in the Word Mines: The Best of Graham Joyce2014ISBN 978-1-848-63804-4posthumous collection from PS Publishing

Short stories

  • "Monastic Lives" (1992)
  • "The Careperson" (1992)
  • "Last Rising Sun" (1992)
  • "The Ventriloquial Art" (1993)
  • "The Apprentice" (1993)
  • "Under the Pylon" (1993)
  • "Gap-Sickness" (1993)
  • "Eat Reecebread" (1994) with Peter F. Hamilton
  • "The Reckoning" (1994)
  • "Black Ball Game" (1995)
  • "A Tip from Bobby Moore" (1996)
  • "The White Stuff" (1997) with Peter F. Hamilton
  • "Pinkland" (1997)
  • "The Mountain Eats People" (1998)
  • "As Seen on Radio" (1998)
  • "Leningrad Nights" (1999)
  • "Candia" (1999)
  • "Incident in Mombasa" (1999)
  • "Horrograph" (1999)
  • "Partial Eclipse" (2000)
  • "Xenos Beach" (2000)
  • "Coventry Boy" (2001)
  • "Leningrad Nights" (2002)
  • "The Coventry Boy" (2002)
  • "First, Catch Your Demon" (2002)
  • "Black Dust" (2002)
  • "Tiger Moth" (2003)
  • "An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen" (2007) – O. Henry Award Juror Favorites, 2009[38]
  • "The Oversoul" (2008) – first published in Who Can Save Us Now? (2008), edited by Owen King and John McNally[citation needed]

Articles

References

  1. ^ Kellogg, Carolyn (9 September 2014). "Award-winning fantasy novelist Graham Joyce has died at 59". Los Angeles Times
  2. ^ Priest, Christopher (2014-09-10). "Graham Joyce obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-08-01.
  3. ^ Williams, Steve (2014-09-12). "Tributes to Coventry fantasy author Graham Joyce who has died at the age of 59". Coventry Live. Retrieved 2024-08-02.
  4. ^ theoriginalvangoghsearanthology (2014-09-09). "An Interview with the Late Graham Joyce". TheOriginalVanGoghsEarAnthology. Retrieved 2024-08-06.
  5. ^ theoriginalvangoghsearanthology (2014-09-09). "An Interview with the Late Graham Joyce". TheOriginalVanGoghsEarAnthology. Retrieved 2024-08-08.
  6. ^ Team, Pukaar (2014-09-11). "Graham Joyce, Leicestershire-Based Author Dies Aged 59". Retrieved 2024-08-03.
  7. ^ Review of The Limits of Enchantment by Victor Gollancz
  8. ^ "The magus of the Midlands". The Guardian. 2000-10-21. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  9. ^ Team, Pukaar (2014-09-11). "Graham Joyce, Leicestershire-Based Author Dies Aged 59". Retrieved 2024-08-03.
  10. ^ Flood, Alison (2014-09-10). "Graham Joyce, much-loved fantasy author, dies aged 59". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  11. ^ Flood, Alison (2014-09-10). "Graham Joyce, much-loved fantasy author, dies aged 59". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  12. ^ Joyce, Graham (2011-10-21). "Don't confuse 'readability' with dumbing down". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-08-04.
  13. ^ Star, Morning (2015-01-14). "Fantastically profound". Morning Star. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  14. ^ theoriginalvangoghsearanthology (2014-09-09). "An Interview with the Late Graham Joyce". TheOriginalVanGoghsEarAnthology. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  15. ^ Graham Joyce (1954–2014), obituary in Locus 9 September 2014
  16. ^ Priest, Christopher (10 September 2014). "Graham Joyce obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 April 2021.
  17. ^ Flood, Alison (2014-09-10). "Graham Joyce, much-loved fantasy author, dies aged 59". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-08-04.
  18. ^ X (2014-09-09). "Award-winning fantasy novelist Graham Joyce has died at 59". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-07-31.
  19. ^ Audio Interview by Rick Kleffel
  20. ^ The Silent Land. 2018-08-25. ISBN 978-1-4091-2940-0.
  21. ^ Offley, Lysette (2014-09-29). "This Might Be The One! – Graham Joyce – Lysette Offley". Genius Material. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  22. ^ Computer and Video Games article
  23. ^ Crecente, Brian (23 May 2016). "How Doom lived up to nearly a decade's worth of expectations (update)". Polygon. Vox Media. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  24. ^ Best science fiction books of 2013 The Guardian, 3 December 2013. Retrieved 29 May 2014.
  25. ^ Lacey, Josh (2005-01-15). "An older England". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-08-05.
  26. ^ Summary bibliography at the Internet Database of Speculative Fiction Archived 22 February 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ "1993 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  28. ^ "1996 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  29. ^ "1997 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  30. ^ "1999 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  31. ^ "2000 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  32. ^ "2002 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  33. ^ "2003 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  34. ^ "2006 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-06.
  35. ^ "2011 World Fantasy Award Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2011-08-09.
  36. ^ "2011 British Fantasy Award Short list". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2011-08-09.
  37. ^ "Announcing the 2013 British Fantasy Awards: Tor Books". 3 November 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2014.
  38. ^ "The O. Henry Prize Past Winners". Random House. Archived from the original on 2017-09-05. Retrieved 30 September 2017.

Interviews