John Harvey with Second Nature, Derby Jazz Festival 2007

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Picture by Garry Corbett www.flickr.com/photos/bluejazzbuddha...

AWARDS:

•  Lonely Hearts named by The Times as one of the 100 most notable crime novels of the last century
•  Short-listed, CWA Gold Dagger for Best Novel, 1990
•  Bronze Medal, Screenplay for Best TV Drama Series, Resnick: Lonely Hearts, The New York Festivals, 1992
•  Short-listed, CWA Dagger in the Library, 1995
•  Short-listed, French CWA Best Foreign Novel, 1997 for Off Minor (Rivages/Noir)
•  Sherlock Award Winner, Best British Detective, 1999 for Charlie Resnick in Last Rites
•  Silver (Runner-up), Sony Radio Drama Award, 1999 for adaptation of Graham Greene's The End of The Affair
•  Winner, Grand Prix du Roman Noir Etranger du Cognac, 2000 for Lumière Froid (Cold Light)
•  Winner, CWA Silver Dagger for Fiction, 2004, for Flesh and Blood
•  Flesh & Blood received The Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel of 2004 (US)
•  Honorary Life Membership of the Notts County Supporters Club, 2005.
•  CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing, 2007
•  Winner, Prix du Polar Europeen for De Cendre et D'Os (Ash & Bone), 2007

John Harvey was born in London in 1938 and, after living in Nottingham for a good number of years, has now returned to north London to live. After studying at Goldsmiths' College, University of London, and at Hatfield Polytechnic, he took his Masters Degree in American Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he taught Film and Literature as a part-time lecturer between 1980 and 1986. 

After teaching English and Drama in secondary schools for twelve years, stopping in 1975, Harvey has lived primarily by his writing. For years he was a regular tutor on residential writing courses run by the Arvon Foundation, and in 1995 he was on the teaching faculty of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Fiction Workshop in Northern California. He has recently decided to do no further teaching, either in workshop or formal situations, but does continue to enjoy giving readings and talking about his work. 

Initially a writer of paperbackfiction - both for adults and teenagers - John Harvey has over 90 published books to his credit. Now principally known as a writer of crime fiction, principally the Charlie Resnick novels, he continues to work on scripts for television and radio, where he has specialised in adapting the work of himself and others - his radio dramatisation of Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" gained the Silver award in the  radio drama  section of the 1999 Sony Radio Awards, he has also adapted novels or short stories by Arnold Bennett, A.S. Byatt, Richard Ford, Bobbie Ann Mason and Jayne Anne Phillips. 

As a poet, his work has appeared in a large number of magazines and pamphlets, and "Ghosts of a Chance", a selected poems, was published by Smith Doorstop Press (Huddersfield, England) in 1992. In 1995, he made a recording of the same title, reading his poems with the accompaniment of the Second Nature jazz group, one of two bands with which he performs whenever he gets the chance. A new collection, "Bluer Than This", was published by Smith Doorstop in Autumn 1998 and reprinted in Autumn1999. 

He ran Slow Dancer Press from 1977 to 1999, editing Slow Dancer magazine until 1993, and continuing since then to publish the work of both new poets and established writers such as Lee Harwood, Libby Houston and Barry MacSweeney. He was the first to publish a collection of Sharon Olds' work in England,and, in 1998, follow edthis up by publishing Lucille Clifton for the first time in Britain in1998. From 1998, Slow Dancer Press published fiction as well as poetry, concentrating on crime fiction, short stories and writing concerned with jazz and blues. 

He has two grown-up children, twins, Tom & Leanne Harvey, born to a marriage which ended in divorce in the mid-seventies; in 1998, 10th August to be precise, a third child, Molly Ernestine Boiling, was born in London, where he and Molly's mother, Sarah, were then living. After living in Cornwall for a year from the summer of 2003, John, Sarah & Molly moved to Nottingham in 2004.