M.J Hyland
M.J Hyland is a multi-award-winning novelist and short story writer. Her second novel, Carry me Down (2004) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won both the Hawthornden and Encore Prize. She has twice been long-listed for The Orange Prize (2004 & 2009), the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2004 & 2007) & This is How (2009) was This is How (2009) was long-listed for the Dublin International IMPAC prize.
M. J. Hyland's non-fiction has been published in Granta, The Guardian, The Financial Times, the London Review of Books, end elsewhere. 'Hardy Animal', Granta: Medicine 2012, was shortlisted for the inaugural William Hazlitt essay prize.
Her stories have been shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Prize (2011 & 2012), she is published in nineteen territories (in English and in translation) and has made more than a dozen appearances on national and international radio, including Radio 4 & the BBC World Service, and was appointed writer-in-residence at Arizona State University (Feb, 2014) writer-in-residence at Griffith University, Australia (June/July 2013) & has appeared at The Edinburgh International Writers' Festival, the Sydney International Writers' festival, the Melbourne International Writers' Festival, & Brisbane Writers' Festival (July 2013) & more.
M.J Hyland was a lecturer in Creative Writing in The Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester from 2007 until 2018.
https://mjh2024.wixsite.com/mjhyland
Address: London, London, City of, United Kingdom
M. J. Hyland's non-fiction has been published in Granta, The Guardian, The Financial Times, the London Review of Books, end elsewhere. 'Hardy Animal', Granta: Medicine 2012, was shortlisted for the inaugural William Hazlitt essay prize.
Her stories have been shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Prize (2011 & 2012), she is published in nineteen territories (in English and in translation) and has made more than a dozen appearances on national and international radio, including Radio 4 & the BBC World Service, and was appointed writer-in-residence at Arizona State University (Feb, 2014) writer-in-residence at Griffith University, Australia (June/July 2013) & has appeared at The Edinburgh International Writers' Festival, the Sydney International Writers' festival, the Melbourne International Writers' Festival, & Brisbane Writers' Festival (July 2013) & more.
M.J Hyland was a lecturer in Creative Writing in The Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester from 2007 until 2018.
https://mjh2024.wixsite.com/mjhyland
Address: London, London, City of, United Kingdom
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Papers by M.J Hyland
We go to the counter.
‘Just stand here,’ says Davies.
The only window is high on the wall, a useless, murky porthole and the walls are covered top to bottom with posters for the missing and wanted.
‘What’s happening now?’ I say.
‘You’ll be put in a holding cell.’
‘And then?’
‘You’ll be interviewed. You’ll make a statement.’
'And then?’
‘You might be charged.’
‘Do I get a solicitor?’
‘You’re entitled to one.’
‘And what about a phone call?’
‘We’ll get to that.’
The desk sergeant comes through a door holding a black mug with steam coming off.
Davies stands close to me and I’m cautioned and put under arrest, the same as before.
‘Patrick James Oxtoby, you are being held in custody on suspicion of murder and anything you say…’
I had been living in London for less than a month, and although I didn't miss Melbourne, my home of twenty-five years, I experienced in that first month—and for the first time in my life—a profound loneliness. Both encounters made me less dependent on friendship and the idea of friendship as a salve to loneliness, and both made me more pleased to be alive.
I was smoking a cigarette on the stone steps of a block of flats in Bloomsbury when a young boy rode up to the bottom step, stopped, and stood over his bicycle.
His legs straddled the frame, the toes of his shoes on the ground. He stayed like this for a few minutes, and when he got tired of standing he leant forward, one arm over the handlebar, one hand in the pocket of his tracksuit pants.
I thought he might ask for a cigarette, but he didn't. He looked at his watch.
"He's late," he said. "He's always late."
M. J. Hyland: From the age of eighteen to twenty-one, I worked any job I could get my hands on. One of these jobs was selling fake paintings door-to-door. There were four of us in the crew. We were taken out each night in the company car—a white minivan—and dropped on suburban street corners with black folio bags. I’d been instructed to pretend I was the artist.
Taken from ‘Hardy Animal’ by M.J. Hyland in Granta 120: Medicine, in Granta 119: Medicine, available for download now and in bookshops from 23 August.
Illustration by Francesco Bongiorni / Eastwing.
We go to the counter.
‘Just stand here,’ says Davies.
The only window is high on the wall, a useless, murky porthole and the walls are covered top to bottom with posters for the missing and wanted.
‘What’s happening now?’ I say.
‘You’ll be put in a holding cell.’
‘And then?’
‘You’ll be interviewed. You’ll make a statement.’
'And then?’
‘You might be charged.’
‘Do I get a solicitor?’
‘You’re entitled to one.’
‘And what about a phone call?’
‘We’ll get to that.’
The desk sergeant comes through a door holding a black mug with steam coming off.
Davies stands close to me and I’m cautioned and put under arrest, the same as before.
‘Patrick James Oxtoby, you are being held in custody on suspicion of murder and anything you say…’
I had been living in London for less than a month, and although I didn't miss Melbourne, my home of twenty-five years, I experienced in that first month—and for the first time in my life—a profound loneliness. Both encounters made me less dependent on friendship and the idea of friendship as a salve to loneliness, and both made me more pleased to be alive.
I was smoking a cigarette on the stone steps of a block of flats in Bloomsbury when a young boy rode up to the bottom step, stopped, and stood over his bicycle.
His legs straddled the frame, the toes of his shoes on the ground. He stayed like this for a few minutes, and when he got tired of standing he leant forward, one arm over the handlebar, one hand in the pocket of his tracksuit pants.
I thought he might ask for a cigarette, but he didn't. He looked at his watch.
"He's late," he said. "He's always late."
M. J. Hyland: From the age of eighteen to twenty-one, I worked any job I could get my hands on. One of these jobs was selling fake paintings door-to-door. There were four of us in the crew. We were taken out each night in the company car—a white minivan—and dropped on suburban street corners with black folio bags. I’d been instructed to pretend I was the artist.
Taken from ‘Hardy Animal’ by M.J. Hyland in Granta 120: Medicine, in Granta 119: Medicine, available for download now and in bookshops from 23 August.
Illustration by Francesco Bongiorni / Eastwing.