Matt Stanley
Matt Stanley was born in Sheffield in 1971. Following a degree in English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, he taught English in Greece, China and Poland. Along the way, he's worked as a bookseller, a holiday rep, a hack journalist and a subeditor. For the last few years, he's been a freelance copywriter and - as James McCreet - is the author of a series of Victorian detective novels and a textbook on novel structure (Before You Write Your Novel, Routledge 2016). See also www.jamesmccreet.co.uk In 2012, he won the main prize in the Guardian's travel-writing competition. Judge Colm Toibin wrote: “This piece is written with flair and economy. Some of the short, darting, declarative sentences manage to suggest a great deal. The story is filled with sharp detail and yet it exudes a kind of mystery. In other words, the city is real, but 'the other me' remains ambiguous and may, indeed, be a dream aspect of the wandering self. This makes the layered account of being in a foreign place exact and credible, but also filled with a sense of adventure and uncertainty.” A Collar for Cerberus is his tenth novel in ten years.
