Joel Thomas Hynes is the author of Down to the Dirt, which won the Percy Janes First Novel Award, shortlisted for the Winterset Award, and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary award. He co-wrote the acclaimed stageplay The Devil You Don’t Know and his most recent play Say Nothing Saw Wood, won the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award for Best Dramatic Script. Also an actor, Hynes has performed leading roles in numerous stageplays, films and television productions. He's well known for playing the role of Nick Crocker in the CBC’s Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, for which he also won a Gemini Award for writing contributions.  Next up he plays the lead in Down in the Dirt, which is coming soon to a big screen near you. Right Away Monday is his second novel. He was recently named 2007 Artist of the Year by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council.

In Progress:

Delusions of Arrival - non-fiction

Say Nothing Saw Wood - novel

• 2005 Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award

Lost Cause Excerpt from Say Nothing Saw Wood
in upcoming Lust for Life (Tales of Sex and Love)

Fiction:

Right Away Monday - novel
HarperCollins Canada, May 2007

Down to the Dirt
HarperCollins Canada, Spring 2005, Killick Press, 2004,
Carroll & Graf, 2005

• Longlisted, 2006 International Impac Dublin Literary Award
• Shortlisted for the 2005 Winterset Award,
  Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council
• Shortlisted for Best Atlantic Published Book
• 2003 Percy Janes First Novel Award
  Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Association

Plays:

The Devil You Don’t Know
w/Sherry White, forthcoming, Killick Press

Other Awards:

• Artist of the Year 2007
  Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council (NLAC)
• CBC Radio Fall Festival of Fiction Award,
  It’s Always Been You
• Golden Sheaf Award, Best Actor, Yorkton Film Festival,
  Ashore
• Best Actor Award, Nickel Film and Video Festival,
  The Audience
• Best Dramatic Script Award, NL Arts and Letters,
  Say Nothing Saw Wood

The Critics:

For Right Away Monday

“Hynes knows the horrors of a hard-liquor, cocaine-spiked hangover at four o'clock in the morning. But he also understands the ecstasies -- a woman with her shirt half-open, the wild plunges of conversation and occasionally, just occasionally, the authentic glimpses of wisdom that happen while you're getting there.”
- David Gilmour, winner of the Giller Prize
for A Perfect Night to Go to China

“Right Away Monday is a rip-roaring and chaotic down-and-out-in-St-John's novel about an alcoholic drug-addicted bartender and the women who love him in spite of himself. It's a raw comedy about how lost can the lost get before detox and redemption. It's hero is the Energizer Bunny of self-destruction and the anti-Christ of political correctness. It's the grunge rock of Can Lit.”
- Douglas Glover, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction
for Elle

“Joel Thomas Hynes shows his literary expansion in this new novel about a young man burning with the resentment and angst of an abusive childhood. Both the hated villain and comic victim, Clayton Reid blunders through his days, riddling everyday events with passion and destruction, leaving love and loathing in his wake. Written in the tough language of its hero, Right Away Monday is a beautiful, suffering story by a gutsy new novelist.”
- Donna Morrissey, author of Kit’s Law and Downhill Chance