About Me

I am Jonathan Gibbs, a writer, critic and lecturer living in London.

My second novel, The Large Door, was published by Boiler House Press, Norwich, in April 2019, and has been called “a haunting work […] poised, suspenseful and enigmatic, with a hint of brute eroticism” (The Financial Times.) You can read more about the novel, including reviews, here.

My debut novel, Randall, or The Painted Grape, was published by Galley Beggar Press of Norwich in June 2014, in the Netherlands, by Uitgeverij Podium, and in France from Buchet/Chastel. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize. You can read more about the novel, including reviews, here.

In March 2020 I started writing a long poem inspired by Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journal in response to the coronavirus epidemic. Spring Journal has now been published in book form by CB Editions. You can read more about it here, and buy it direct from the publisher here.

Other published stories include: ‘The Story I’m Thinking Of‘ (click to read), which was shortlisted for the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013. ‘The Faber Book of Adultery‘ (click to read) appeared in Lighthouse, is anthologised in Best British Short Stories 2014 (Salt, edited by Nicholas Royle) and is also available on online at The Barcelona Review. ‘Festschrift‘ appears in the second issue of the excellent Gorse, and also appears in Best British Short Stories 2015. Another story, ‘Southampton‘, appears in #1 Short Story Anthology (Vanguard Editions).

My story ‘A Prolonged Kiss‘ was published in The Lonely Crowd 12, in December 2020. In June 2021 it was short-listed for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2021.

I am represented by Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates. I write on books for The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, as well as many other outlets in the past. The journalism page on this blog has links to some of this material.

In September 2017 I started A Personal Anthology, a project in which I invite writers, critics and others to ‘dream-edit’ an anthology of their favourite short stories. Now in its fourth year, it has featured over 100 guest editors, who between them have recommended nearly 1,500 stories by over 800 writers. You can find out more here and sign up for the weekly email here.

I am interested in creative uses of Twitter, and in 2013 I wrote a year-long experimental story, ‘J’, on a dedicated account @365daystory. Read more about it here. Otherwise I’m @Tiny_Camels, though I’m also mucking about on @DiaryOfANovel. I also undertook a project with Melville House publishers whereby I read all their Art of the Novella series and blogged about them. Read more here.

I am a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at City, University of London, where I am programme director for the MA/MFA in Creative Writing. Previously I lectured at St Mary’s, Twickenham, and at the University of East Anglia, where I did the MA in Creative Writing, receiving the Malcolm Bradbury Bursary, and then a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing, which comprised Randall, or The Painted Grape, and a critical essay, Beyond Ekphrasis: The Role and Function of Artworks in the Novels of Don DeLillo.

I have also taught on the Kingston Writing School’s Summer Programme in Athens, and the National Academy of Writing’s Summer School in Cambridge. I have run a Creative Writing workshop at the last three LSE Literature Festivals, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book, won a Literary Death Match, and continue to read from my fiction any chance I get.

The moniker Tiny Camels comes from the title of a short story I wrote that was published in digital form by Shortfire Press but is currently unavailable. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the so-called ‘meme’ in which the phrase ‘two camels in a tiny car’ is seen to be so, like, random, that it totally wins any argument ever, dude. All arguments entered into on this blog will be won by cold hard logic. Please get in contact via the form below.

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