Graham Joyce 1954-2014

My colleague, the talented fantasy novelist, Graham Joyce, died last year, and I helped clear his office (which we shared with Georgina Lock) a few weeks ago. There’s an event celebrating his life and work this Saturday, at 11am, as part of the States of Independence independent publishers festival in Leicester, which is always an interesting day. Graham was a true independent: free thinking, irascible on occasion, inspiring and, most of all, an original. I was, for a few years – technically – his line manager on the MA in Creative Writing that I used to run and still teach on. Graham preferred the word ‘boss’ and, boy, did he hate all bosses. We had our differences, but they had long dissolved into mutual warmth and respect by the end of his life. Our colleague and friend, Professor John Goodridge, has mounted a small exhibition celebrating Graham’s life and work at Nottingham Trent University, and I photographed it yesterday. The exhibition’s in our busiest lecture hall, John Clare 6, and aimed primarily at our undergraduates, so not easily accessible to the public. However, if you’d like to read a pdf of the text that accompanies the exhibition, you can download it by clicking on the link below

Graham Joyce Exhibition.