Gollancz reports that Graham Joyce has passed away after a long illness. Joyce, the author of novels including Dreamside, The Silent Land, and Some Kind of Fairy Tale, was born on October 22, 1954.
After studying education, he was a youth officer for the National Association of Youth Clubs until 1988, when he changed tracks to pursue a career as a writer. His first novel, Dreamside was published in 1991—Joyce then moved back to England to pursue a career as a full-time writer. He was the author of twenty-one novels and numerous short stories. He was awarded the British Fantasy Award an extraordinary seven times, and also won an O. Henry Award for “An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen,” which was published in The Paris Review in 2009.
He talks about the clarity that a cancer diagnosis brings in this dark and beautiful essay, but his stories were filled with this same clarity, jagged language, and dedication to mining meotional truth through fiction. He gave us many gorgeous stories, and he will be greatly missed.
