- M. J. Hyland
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M.J. Hyland 
Born 6 June 1968 (age 43)
London, EnglandOccupation Novelist, Lecturer Nationality British Period 2000-present Maria Joan Hyland (born 6 June 1968) is a novelist. She made her debut in Australia in 2003 with How the Light Gets In. Her second novel Carry Me Down was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and won both the Encore Award and the Hawthornden Prize in 2007. Hyland currently lives in Manchester, England, where she is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.[1]
Contents
Life
Maria Joan Hyland was born in London to Irish parents. When she was two years old her family moved to Australia, but returned to Dublin after a few years, where Hyland spent her early childhood. When she was eleven years old, the family once again travelled to Australia, settling in Melbourne. After finishing school she worked briefly in film and television — appearing uncredited in an episode of Carson's Law and working for a time as a Director's Assistant on the Hinch program — before completing an Arts/Law degree at the University of Melbourne in 1996. She worked as a lawyer for about six years. In 2004 she completed a M.A. in English at the University of Melbourne.
Hyland moved to London in 2005. In 2006, she lived in Rome thanks to an Australia Council scholarship.[2] She teaches at the Manchester Centre for New Writing.
Writing
Hyland was first published at the age of 17 in Australian Short Stories.[3]
Through the 1990s Hyland edited the now defunct literary magazine Nocturnal Submissions.[4] One of her early stories was published in the magazine New York Stories, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Hyland can work painstakingly and has at times taken a week to write a single paragraph.[5] In 2002 she received an Australia Council grant to complete the final draft of her first novel, and to work on the first and second draft of a second novel about "family, first-love and lies."[6]
Her first novel How the Light Gets In (2003) was published by Penguin in Australia, and then the following year by Canongate in the United Kingdom. It has been translated into many languages, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and took third place in the 2005 Barnes and Noble Discover Award. In 2004 Hyland was jointly awarded the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelist Award for How the Light Gets In.
Her second novel, Carry Me Down, was published in 2006 by Canongate, and was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the 2007 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Europe and South Asia Region). Hyland's writing style has been described as claustrophobic, and she has been dubbed "the mistress of the telling detail".[7]
Hyland has also written a short-story[8] and non-fiction piece[9] for Australian magazine The Monthly.
Awards
- The Sydney Morning Herald Award for Best Young Australian Novelist, 2004
- The 'Encore Award', for Best Second Book, (United Kingdom) 2007
- The 'Hawthornden Prize', for Best Work of Literature, (United Kingdom) 2007
Works
- How the Light Gets In, Canongate, 2004. ISBN 1-84195-548-5.
- Carry Me Down, 2006, ISBN 1-84195-740-2 (hardback), ISBN 1-84195-734-8 (paperback)
- This Is How, 2009, ISBN 9780802170620.
Footnotes
- ^ University of Manchester. Press release: 'M. J. Hyland appointed as Lecturer in Creative Writing.' 2007.
- ^ Intro to ABC radio breaksfast segment 17 August 2006, with Fran Kelly
- ^ 'The Hot Seat: M. J. Hyland' in Sydney Morning Herald, 7 October 2006
- ^ 'Shining a light on teenage alienation' by Owen Richardson in The Age, 12 July 2003
- ^ outro to Fran Kelly interview on ABC radio, 17 August 2006
- ^ Australian Parliamentary Debates, Official Hansard, No. 4, 2003: the grant of $10,000 was awarded on 18 September 2002, "Final draft of a first novel about family and dysfunction told in the unconventional voice of a gifted teenage girl from a poor Sydney family who lives as an exchange student for a year in an affluent mid-west city in the US. First/second draft of a second novel about family, first-love and lies."
- ^ Australian Book Review online, 'Best Books of 2006'
- ^ MJ Hyland (2010-12-02). "Summer Reading: First-Class Passage". The Monthly (Schwartz Publishing). http://www.themonthly.com.au/summer-reading-mj-hyland-first-class-passage-2923. Retrieved 2011-01-18.
- ^ MJ Hyland (2005-12-01). "The Nation Reviewed: Fumigation in London & Amsterdam". The Monthly (Schwartz Publishing). http://www.themonthly.com.au/fumigation-london-amsterdam-mj-hyland-161. Retrieved 2011-01-18.
External links
- MJ Hyland's Official Website mjhyland.com
- Official website from Grove Atlantic publishers.
- Official website from Canongate Books.
- Author profile at Manchester Centre for New Writing.
- Author profile at Booked Out Australia.
- Author biography from the AustLit database.
- Author interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.
- Author interview at bibliofemme.
- Author interview with Three Monkeys.
- Author interview as part of Barnes and Noble's 'Meet the Writers' series.
- Short story, 'A Boy, an Ex-Orphanage, and a Trapped Dog', in Zoetrope: All-Story.
Categories:- 1968 births
- Living people
- Australian novelists
- Australian women writers
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