About Me
Since leaving the English county of Suffolk, Joel Willans has lived in London, Vancouver, Helsinki and an Andean village in the Peruvian departmento of ApurÃmac. Currently, he lives in a converted hospital sauna in the Finnish countryside and is a partner at the communications agency, Ink Tank.
His stories have been broadcast on BBC radio and published in more than twenty anthologies. Work has also appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and journals, including Pen Pusher, Brand, Southword, Riptide and The Momaya Review. Online his flash fiction can be found at places like Prick-of-the Spindle, Pank, Word Riot, Every Day Fiction and Opium.
In the last couple of years, his writing has received recognition in many competitions including the Bristol Prize and Flatmancrooked Prize for Excellent Writing. In 2008, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the Yeovil Prize and Global Short Story Award. In 2010 his work was shortlisted for the Scott Prize for Short Fiction.
His short story collection, "Five Reasons for Leaving" will be published in the UK by Route in 2012.
Any favorite authors? Books?
Ali Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, Iain Banks, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Nathan Englander, Alice Munro, David Mitchell, Saul Bellow, Arundhati Roy, J.D Salinger, J.M Coetzee, Aldous Huxley, Jose Saramago, J.R.R. Tolkien, Irvine Walsh, Paul Auster, George Orwell, Junot Diaz, Elmore Leonard, Roald Dahl, Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Peter Carey, Charles Dickens, V.S Pritchett, Hunter S. Thompson, V.S Naipaul, Yiyun Li, Miranda July, Olaf Olafsson, Jamaica Kincaid, John Updike, Kazuo Ishiguro, Joseph Conrad, etc etc etc
No suckling gibbon here, Jesi. In fact, nothing here at all. I'll sort that out later. Maybe a slobbering kitten this time...
You're simply luminous.
Hey Joel. I've been staring at your image trying to figure out what about impending fatherhood might have given you a messiah complex, then I spotted it in a 'doh' sort of moment.
Eh up, Willans.
Hey Joel...
Welcome aboard.