Jon Harley is a writer from Yorkshire. He writes novels, short stories and non-fiction essays, and returns most often to the intersection of LGBT+ issues and Northeast life. He’s a secular Buddhist and is known for his love of maps.
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Prominent themes in Jon Harley’s writing include:
Jon Harley was born in Yorkshire in early 1968, and was a witness to the historic strikes in France in May 1968, though he can’t remember anything about it. He grew up in Yorkshire and Teesdale, and first lived in Newcastle upon Tyne in the late 1980s as a postgraduate student. At university Jon did the lighting design/operation for many student theatre productions, laid out the first edition of the student newspaper ever to be produced on a computer, and was elected chair of the student union council. Since then he has mostly worked in the software industry. Nowadays he is a member of the Society of Authors and the Literary & Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Writing Life He started writing stories and novels at the age of 9, and hasn't stopped since. For A-level English, he included a portfolio of his poems for extra credit and received a special commendation from the external examiner. At the age of 50 he started an MA degree in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, which was awarded in 2020 (with a Distinction).
Professional Life Jon has had a long career in IT, starting with a BSc in Software Engineering (University of Birmingham, 1989) and a PhD in Computing Science (Newcastle University, 1993). He has worked internationally as a freelance and founded his own software company in 2009. He now works for a global corporation.
Personal Life He has lived with his now-husband Steve since the late 1990s and they had a civil partnership ceremony in Yorkshire in 2006. Jon has had several dogs, all labradors. He goes to football matches at St. James’ Park and follows road race cycling on TV. He has been vegetarian and a Buddhist since his late 20s, but is not aligned to any one school of Buddhism.
Volunteering He is a director of the OpenStreetMap UK Community Interest Company (CIC) and regularly does volunteer work for other charities, most recently Northern Pride and the Ouseburn Trust.
Interesting Facts He has worked as a guide at a stately home and appeared as an extra on a BBC TV series, as well as co-directing a film that won a prize at an amateur film festival. He has visited around 30 countries, and has crossed the equator twice but the international date line only once. He once stayed as a guest in a Buddhist monastery on top of a remote mountain in Japan.
Further biographical details and print resolution photos for press use are available upon enquiry by email.
Jon was one of the first people in the world to see the World Wide Web via the Mosaic browser in 1993, and created his first personal “home page” in 1994 soon after setting up his employer’s very first website (though the earliest copy that archive.org saved was from 1996). This page is just the latest iteration of personal web pages going back almost 30 years.
Jon Harley is an enthusiastic amateur at photography. He likes to take photos on his travels, and has a particular interest in snapping people going about their day (in the manner of Cartier-Bresson). He also likes to turn his snaps into digital art occasionally, but strives for something more original than off-the-shelf filters and effects. And of course, every photo tells a story.
October 2001. The sunset is very red because of dust in the air from September 2001. What the photo can’t convey is the smell that was hanging in the air - I’ll never forget it.
Passengers leaving a KLM City Hopper from Frankfurt to Schiphol airport, Amsterdam.
A small resting-house for travellers outside Preah Khan in Angkor, which at the time was the largest city in the world. It reminds me of a Saxon church, but not built of wood, which is why it’s still standing and the contemporary buildings in northern Europe aren’t.
A cluster of geeks outside the San Francisco conference centre hosting Google I/O. At least one of them will be consulting Google Maps to find out where he is.
Dawn in downtown San Francisco. I was awake at the wrong time because of jet lag.
A traditional moon gate in the Chinese Garden in Sydney, which was probably my favourite thing in Sydney other than Taronga Zoo and Obelisk Beach. It motivated me to go to China a few years later.
seems to be going on between this boy and his dog near Sitges in Catalonia.
This sculpture seems to me to be much more about the skyline of Chicago than the clouds.
As I waited for a local train from Hakone to Tokyo, this bullet train zipped through.
A sculpture in the Millenium Mall, Singapore which I loved instantly. Paper bodies seem to be falling, but they are actually floating, exposed but safe above the crowds.
A Warwickshire field I knew intimately, very close to home and on a route I walked every day with my dog for years.
Sunset over the Pacific. I first saw a sunset here with a friend I was visiting who was at UCSC. It was awfully nice of her to show me sights like this.
Sunshine breaking through the mist as Highway One twists along the Pacific coast south of Big Sur.
Jon Harley has been using social media since 1986 (emails and online forums, including a collaborative writing forum from 1987 onwards). He was an active participant on Usenet from 1989 onwards where he was known worldwide as the editor of the soc.bi FAQ. From 2001 he was also on LiveJournal, keeping a limited access, friends-oriented journal. He has been publishing blogs, essays and travel journals on the public web from around 2004 to the present.
Mostly prose writing, often thoughts on current events and personal reflections. Also some movie/TV reviews and quotes, poems and favourite images. Running since 2014, it’s more mixed-media than the traditional blog format.
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A substack (essentially a weekly column that you get by email) focussing on the problems of writing a sequel novel and lessons learnt writing the previous novel. Free to read.
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Shorter thoughts and interaction with the community. (Mastodon is like Twitter but with no adverts and complete control over what you do and don’t want to read.) Jon joined the alternative social network in 2018.
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Well over 2,000 answers on questions from tech to sex and maps to academia.
Snapshots, mostly landscape and quirky stuff seen around the city. Very few selfies and even fewer food photos!
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Networking with IT career colleagues.