Australian · b. 1968
M.J. Hyland grew up in working-class Melbourne and writes about misfits who can't quite fit. "Carry Me Down" (2006), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, follows a twelve-year-old boy convinced he can detect lies—a gift that isolates him from everyone around him. The Australian-British author's prose is spare and tense. Her three novels share a subject: people who want desperately to connect and cannot manage it.