M. J. Hyland

Maria Joan Hyland is an ex-lawyer and the author of three novels: How the Light Gets In (2004), Carry Me Down (2006) and This Is How (2009). Hyland is a lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Centre for New Writing. Carry Me Down was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore Prize.

Hyland has twice been longlisted for the Orange Prize (2007 and 2010), twice shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (2004 and 2007), and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

At the University of Manchester she has run fiction workshops alongside Martin Amis (2007–2010), Colm Tóibín (2010–2011) and Jeanette Winterson (2013–present). Hyland runs regular Fiction Masterclasses in the Guardian Masterclass Programme, has twice been shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Prize (2011 and 2012) and she publishes in The Guardian's"How to Write" series, Financial Times, the London Review of Books, Granta and elsewhere.