"Plot is masterfully conducted" - The New Yorker
About me
I am the award-winning author of three novels (including “Fire Horses” and “Out of Office”, pub. Legend Press), and a novelette which was praised by the New Yorker. I have received four generous awards from the Royal Literary Fund and one from the Authors’ Foundation. Dozens of my short stories and poems have been published in anthologies, magazines and literary websites, including 3:am, Aesthetica and Prole. I graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Novel Writing.
Hundreds of my features and comments have been published in the UK nationals, including The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Independent, Critic, The Author, Spectator and New Statesman, as well as in the US and Ireland. I have been interviewed on BBC Radio; appeared on and researched for TV, including a Channel 4 show aged 20; and helped write the script of a West End show.
What they said about Fire Horses
“Reading Fire Horses is like riding pillion on a motorbike driven by a poet”
– Jonathan Trigell, author, “Boy A”
“As a debut novel it shines, both in the quality of the writing and the insights into mankind and modern history”
– Mike French, “The View from Here”
“Passionate, powerful, poetic – a fine debut from an original talent”
– John King, author, “The Football Factory”
“Piggott’s debut novel is a plausible evocation of seamy ‘80s life viewed through the prism of complicated male friendship. Piggott’s eye for social detail is acute, and his love for his characters shines through.”
– John O’Connell, “Time Out”
“Every serious or even semi serious reader deludes themselves with the notion that they “have a book in them”. We read the mundane, run of the mill fiction that populates many of the best seller lists convinced that we could do at least as well ourselves. Then, out of the blue, a book comes along that destroys this fantasy. A book that is so well conceived and crafted that it brings us back to earth with a resounding thud. Our delusions evaporate as they are exposed to true literary ability and talent. Fortunately our perception is not so befuddled that we can fail to recognise excellence when we are in its presence. Fire Horses is such a book and Mark Liam Piggott it seems is such an author.”
- Glasgow Book Group
What they said about Out of Office
“Piggott’s writing conjures evocative portraits of individuals lumbering between political correctness and more culturally ingrained biases. He possesses a way with metaphor and analogy which, when utilised sparingly and with a lightness of touch, rivals Martin Amis. He is expert at offering up succinct definitions of the quite complex web that multiculturalism, changing technologies and generational misunderstandings can weave around us.”
- “Outside Left” magazine, issue 22
“Mark Piggott is a talented and exciting writer; his novel is original, powerful and fast-moving, and takes the reader, all unprepared, into places he would probably have avoided had he been warned. But from page one it is too late; he is being hurtled along and he cannot get off.”
- Paula McMaster, “Bookgroup.info”
(In July 2009 The Book Group awarded Out of Office the title "book of the month" – along with novels by Hilary Mantel and Cormac McCarthy).
“This is a book that really makes you think about contemporary Britain and the difficult issues of race and class with which it is still grappling. It's also a book that resists easy answers and skewers political correctness. Mark Piggott wrote a few months ago in The Independent that British `state of the nation' novels tended to fall under the radar, but he has written one here that deserves a wide audience.”
- Andrew Blackman, author, “On the Holloway Road”
What they said about my shorter fiction
"Ten Thousand Hours” was a very striking story; its plot is masterfully conducted; the setting is oppressive but never stagnant, as the story ultimately has an interesting twist."
- The New Yorker
Praise for Midnight Hollow (first published in "Still" anthology, Negative Press, 2015)
“An old man named Edward explores the empty town hall where he used to be a caretaker. He finds his old floor buffer, and gives the place a polish for old times’ sake. This piece is a poignant evocation of time passing, and reflecting on what’s been lost in a life. And the ending is a real shock to the system…”
- David Hebbelthwaite (Huff Post)
Praise for Hatful of Holloway (first published in the "Down the Angel and Up Holloway" anthology, Pulp Books 2006)
“’Hatful of Holloway’ by Mark Piggott is a helter-skelter, cultural reference loaded pub-crawl around Holloway, with the suicidal son of a Scottish Earl, and his pal, Murf, a loquacious Dubliner with an appetite for a nasty brand of porno mag. This is a mad-cap adventure, deserving of a few readings to fully appreciate its density and tragi-comic heart.”
— Small Press Review Issue One, July/August 2007 p23
My latest posts
Latest blogs, posts, articles and comments. Read the rest on my blog page.
