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.
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. 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.
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!'
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 from the University of Leicester in 1980, 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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
He was a supporter of Coventry City FC and occasionally wrote pieces for fanzines.
Joyce died on 9 September 2014. He had been diagnosed with Mantle Cell lymphoma in 2013. 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".
Graham Joyce lived in Wistow, near Leicester, with his wife and their two children.
Bill Sheehan, who wrote the introduction for Partial Eclipse, states:
Among the issues Graham dramatizes are the inevitability of grief, loss, growth, and change, the primal importance of family bonds, the beauty of the feminine, the life altering effects of parenthood, the nature of the creative unconscious, the overwhelming power of the erotic, the corrupting effects of power, the importance of self-awareness, and the fundamental need for order, meaning, and coherence in the face of a chaotic, inimical universe.
American author, editor and literary critic Jeff VanderMeer said:
Joyce's fiction has always displayed a certain generosity of spirit that lifts it above the ordinary. This generosity is not at all sentimental, but is alive with sentiment and an appreciation for the mysteries of life.
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.'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."
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 and Some Kind of Fairy Tale.
Joyce co-wrote song lyrics for French songwriter and composer Emilie Simon on her albums The Big Machine (2009) and Franky Knight (2011).