About

Born 1945. Fiction since 1966.

Books include:

The Committed Men, Hutchinson New Authors 1971. In Viriconium, 1982. The Ice Monkey [short stories], 1984. Viriconium Nights [short stories], 1985.

Climbers, 1989. The Luck in the Head [graphic novel with Ian Miller], 1991. The Course of the Heart, 1992. Signs of Life, 1997. Things That Never Happen [selected short stories 1975-1998], 2002. Light, 2002. Nova Swing, 2006. Empty Space, 2012.

You Should Come With Me Now [short stories], 2017. The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again, 2020. Settling the World [selected short stories with an introduction by Jennifer Hodgson], 2020. Wish I Was Here, 2023, “So wholly original that a label doesn’t do it justice” –New Statesman.

Reviews, short fiction & nonfiction over the last fifty years or so, in a range of venues including the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, Granta, the Literary Review, Fictionable, Time Out, Transatlantic Review, Conjunctions, Arc Magazine, New Scientist, the Independent on Sunday, the Telegraph & the New York Times.

Interview & readings. And here the Shakespeare & Company podcast.

In Viriconium shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, 1982. Climbers was awarded the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, 1989. Nova Swing won the Arthur C Clarke Award, 2007. You Should Come With Me Now longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, 2018. The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again was awarded the Goldsmiths Fiction Prize, 2020 and longlisted for the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, 2022.

Booker Prize judge, 2022.

Contact: Leave a comment here at the blog; or I’m on Twitter, @mjohnharrison. If the situation at Twitter becomes untenable, I’ll always be here, or at the big extinct elephant: @mjohnharrison@mastodon.social

Representation: Will Francis at Janklow & Nesbit.

Photo Cath Phillips, 2014