Leicestershire mourns a tragic loss of Graham Joyce, one of the counties best literary figures, who died on September 9th 2014. He wrote more than a dozen novels and short stories until he died from lymphoma cancer. The author had spoken to Pukaar Magazine back in May of this year.
Born on October 22 1954, in Keresly, Graham went to college in Derby and later did a Masters in Modern English and American Literature at the University of Leicester. He worked at the National Youth Organisation in Leicester up until 1998 when he began his career in writing.
Along with his wife, Suzanne, they moved to Greece where Graham was able to practise his writing in a serene environment. Consequently, his novel Dreamside was published and the two returned to Leicester, which ultimately began Joyce’s professional job as a writer.
Author of award winning titles: Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Indigo, TWOC, The Facts of Life, Dark Sister and The Tooth Fairy, the Leicester-based author was labelled “a truly great novelist” by Stephen King and had a huge success.
Graham won The British fantasy award six times, a substantial award voted by writers and readers and had also won the prestigious World Fantasy Award.
He gained a large readership from people of the midlands since many of his books are set in the area. His most recent, The Year of the Ladybird, is predominantly constructed in Lincolnshire-sea resort: Skegness. He tells us: “Because I’ve set a lot of the books in the East Midlands it means I have quite a lot of readers in the area and I think they appreciate the settings of these books in the world that they know.”
The father of two was diagnosed with Mantle Cell lymphoma last year, which he publicises in his blog post of July 2013 and describes his chemotherapy as “hard work.” As a man of many words, he continued to write about his journey of cancer like an adventure.
The fantasy writer died in a hospital near his Leicester home on Tuesday afternoon.
His death was announced by his publishers through his twitter account, which stated: “We are so sorry to have to tell everyone that Graham died this afternoon. He was always so good with words we don’t know what to say.”
