What they thought of the new book

Published on 2 February by Bloomsbury, Jon’s new book, This Isn’t The Sort of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You, has been reviewed by The Observer, The Independent and The Daily Mail, amongst others – and has been long listed for the London Book Award 2012. You can read the reviews here…

Jon McGregor has a story in the December 2011 issue of Prospect Magazine. Keeping Watch Over The Sheep is a story about a man trying to attend his daughter’s first nativity play, and failing. It’s taken from Jon’s new collection, This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You, which will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2012.  The first paragraph of the story, with a rather nice illustration, is here. You’ll need to buy the actual magazine to read the rest. Which is well worth doing.

Did you know that Jon’s opened a little side business? Yes: as part of the run-up to his new book (This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You), he commissioned the design and printing of some broadsides featuring his story “That Colour”, and the design, printing, and binding of some chapbooks featuring several stories.

The edition of broadsides is 100, but only around 30 are being sold; the edition of chapbooks is the same, with only around ten for sale. If you’re looking for a special present, what about one of these?

Jon’s got a new story in the Manchester Review, and you can read it for free online here. Pretty nice, eh?

Jon’s been long-listed (or should that be extremely-long-listed?!) for an IMPAC literary award! Long (long, long) list here. Details about the award here.

The National Short Story Award Anthology is now available! Jon’s story, “Wires”, which took second place, is included–along with four others which we’re sure are also pretty good. Just click here to order it directly from Comma Press.

Jon McGregor has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, for his story ‘Wires’ (which will be included in the forthcoming collection, ‘This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You’). The story will be broadcast on Radio 4 this Wednesday, and the winner announced on September 26th. (Some of you may recall that Jon was also shortlisted for the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award. But he wouldn’t want to brag about that.)

Tucked away off the main drag of the very wonderful (and slightly bearded) Green Man Festival, there’s a literature tent which will, on the Sunday, be featuring readings from Joe Dunthorne, Jon McGregor, and Simon Armitage, amongst others.

Jon will be reading, for the first time in public, stories from his forthcoming collection This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You. Some of them are very short. Some of them are funny, sort of.

Tickets for Green Man have now sold out, but if you know someone lucky enough to be going you could maybe tell them to get to the literature tent at 2pm. And let’s hope no-one makes a bootleg video recording and sticks it up on youtube, eh?

Did you know Jon’s been made an Honorary Lecturer in the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham? Indeed. And he’s keeping a blog (!) in preparation for it: On Learning to Read.

Jon’s got a piece in Five Dials, a really lovely .pdf literary magazine. You can download it for free here.