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Jon McGregor

(b.1976)

Jon McGregor was born in Bermuda in 1976.

He moved with his family to England and spent his childhood in Norwich and Thetford, Norfolk, later studying at Bradford University for a degree in Media Technology and Production. He started writing seriously during his final year at University, contributing a series entitled 'Cinema 100' to the anthology Five Uneasy Pieces (Pulp Faction). He has had short fiction published by several magazines, including Granta magazine. He has been runner-up in the BBC National Short Story Competition twice, in 2010 and 2011.

Awards: Nibbies (2018), Dublin (2012), SoA (2003) see all

Genres: Literary Fiction

Series

Reservoir
Reservoir 13 (2017)
The Reservoir Tapes (2017)

Novels

   If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things (2002)
   So Many Ways to Begin (2006)
   Even the Dogs (2010)
   Lean Fall Stand (2021)

Collections

   This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You (2012)
   Reverse Engineering (2022) (with others)
   Duets (2024) (with others)

Series contributed to

BBC National Short Story Award
The BBC National Short Story Award 2010 (2010) (with others)
The BBC National Short Story Award 2011 (2011) (with others)

Books containing stories by Jon McGregor

Head Land (2016)
10 Years of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize
edited by
Rodge Glass

The Best British Short Stories 2012 (2012)
(Best British Short Stories)
edited by
Nicholas Royle

One For The Trouble (2011)
(Book Slam Annual, book 1)
edited by
Patrick Neate

More books

Awards

	2018 British Book Award Fiction Book of the Year : Reservoir 13
	2012 Dublin Literary Award : Even the Dogs
	2003 Betty Trask Prize : If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things

Award nominations

	2019 Dublin Literary Award (nominee) : Reservoir 13
	2018 The Writers' Prize for Fiction (nominee) : Reservoir 13
	2018 Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award (longlist) : Reservoir 13
	2017 Goldsmiths Prize (nominee) : Reservoir 13
	2017 Booker Prize (longlist) : Reservoir 13
	2011 BBC National Short Story Prize (nominee) : Wires
	2010 BBC National Short Story Prize (nominee) : If it Keeps on Raining
	2006 Booker Prize (longlist) : So Many Ways to Begin
	2002 Booker Prize (longlist) : If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things

Jon McGregor recommends

The Benefactors (2025)
Wendy Erskine
"A powerful, moving, compelling, utterly enthralling debut novel from the excellent Wendy Erskine. The Benefactors follows the fallout from one young woman's awful experience of the young men around her, and explores the many ways in which lies are told, perpetuated, and excused. Wendy Erskine understands young people in all their complicated awfulness and brilliance, and the way she inhabits and carries such a range of troubled voices in this novel is a wonder. We're all better off for being able to read a novel as rich as this."

Fair Play (2025)
Louise Hegarty
"An ingenious puzzle-box of a novel, where nothing is solved but everything is discovered. Louise Hegarty plays - often hilariously, always knowingly - with the forms and conventions of detective fiction, constantly pulling the rug from under the reader in a manner that echoes, heart-wrenchingly, the rug-pull at the heart of it all. Sad, funny, clever, engrossing; this is a wonderful debut."

Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good (2024)
Eley Williams
"There are very few writers with as clear and thrilling a love for the stuff of language as Eley Williams. These are stories of deft surprise and smuggled revelations, glorious snapshots of lives lived with bafflement and wonder. Magical."

Pity (2024)
Andrew McMillan
"We already knew that Andrew McMillan could turn a phrase. With his debut novel, he also shows us a rare gift for storytelling. Pity digs deep into the heart and history of South Yorkshire and brings out the black gold of love, longing and loss. A triumph."

We Move (2022)
Gurnaik Johal
"These are excellent stories, told with skill and verve. Gurnaik Johal has a sharp eye for details, an ear for the gaps and evasions in real dialogue, and a heart for the hopes and regrets that carry us through our lives. But most of all, he has the instincts of a storyteller, and in We Move he has put those instincts to great effect."

The Great Mistake (2021)
Jonathan Lee
"A wonderful, compelling, finely-tuned and deeply loveable novel, with a central character who is all of those things too. Jonathan Lee has taken the bare facts of a nearly-forgotten life and turned them into a rich and unforgettable story, told with a relish for language and voice. Mr. Andrew Haswell Green now has permanent lodgings in my brain, and very welcome he is too."

A Lonely Man (2021)
Chris Power
"A Lonely Man is a remarkable debut; an accomplished and intricately plotted story that manages to be both thrilling and deeply considered. If you're a fan of existential crises, family dramas, Putin-era paranoias, and Bolaño-style multiplicities, and want to see them woven into one taut novel, you're in the right place. A lonely triumph."

The House on Vesper Sands (2018)
(Inspector Henry Cutter and Sergeant Gideon Bliss, book 1)
Paraic O'Donnell
"I'm not completely sure what the word 'rollicking' means, but I can personally guarantee that The House on Vesper Sands is a rollicking good read. For a novel about grief, estrangement, and the literal stealing of vulnerable young women's souls, this book is a lot more fun than it has any right to be. Paraic O'Donnell's sheer love of his characters is exuberant and infectious; the dialogue crackles with verve and wit, and the plotting is as intricately satisfying as a heavy pocket watch. The setting may be Victorian , but in modern parlance this novel is an absolute banger."

All Among the Barley (2018)
Melissa Harrison
"An incredible evocation of one particular corner of rural England in the 1930s. Powerful and subtle and richly detailed, this is a book that inhabits its territory, knows its people, and follows its own haunting logic. Some of the great themes of English life are tackled here - class division, the patriarchy, folklore and psychosis, creeping fascism - but rather than being simply ticked off they are instead woven into the narrative with great subtlety and beauty. I've been following Melissa Harrison's work with interest for some time now, and with this novel she's done what I've long suspected she would: she's written a masterpiece."

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