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Jon Doyle is a writer based in Port Talbot, South Wales. He was part of Literature Wales' Representing Wales scheme in 2022/23, and won the Writers & Artists Working-Class Writers' Prize 2023. He holds a BSc and MRes in Zoology, an MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University, and a PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University. His work has appeared in Short Fiction, Hobart, Ploughshares Online, The Rumpus, 3:AM Magazine, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction among other places. Communion is his first novel.
Brimming with big themes - faith, masculinity, activism. Tense and absorbing * Observer, Best Debuts of 2026 * There is also Doyle's exquisite way with words, his mastery of the small details that place you in the setting ... I was transported at times to rooms from my childhood, no small feat. * The Irish Times * Gritty and luminous, intelligent and sincere, a radical and transgressive novel in which the profane, the political and the personal are entirely rooted in the sacred. Communion is both tender and confrontational, an immaculate debut with dirt under its fingernails * Colin Walsh, author of Kala * A precise, delicate novel about the complexities of belonging, which gradually and powerfully builds in spiritual intensity ... In prose both quotidian and mystical, Communion expands the possibilities of its title in every dimension and marks the arrival of an explosive new talent. * The Observer * A book of rare grace and presence, Communion transported me from its opening pages. It is a deeply moving novel about faith, doubt and morality, held firm by a steady beat of love * Megan Hunter, author of Days of Light * A highly original book that strips back the traditional architecture of the novel until each paragraph arrives like a short, beautiful breath, and in the silences between, the true voices of Port Talbot are able to sing through. A thrilling evocation of a community * Andrew McMillan, author of Pity * A rare novel. Communion bears witness to quiet accumulating impacts, a tolling, calling out the fundamental question, what happens when the things at the centre of what we try to believe in gutter out, one by one? This is poignant, resounding writing. * Cynan Jones, author of Pulse * Electric... A wonderful, brilliant piece of work. Just brilliant. This is someone with a voice, with something to say, with a natural talent * Kasim Ali, author of Good Intentions * A startling interrogation of class identity, Catholicism and masculinity. It questions whether community binds or blinds us, asking what it means to speak against the people and places we come from when the fabric of such places is under threat. This timely, prescient novel asks how communities might nourish us, and when they begin to cut us off from the wider world * Jessica Andrews, author of Milk Teeth * Jon Doyle is a great new voice - and an important one. His work is real in the very best sense: exactly observed, often funny and unafraid of the greatest themes * Tom Bullough, author of Sarn Helen and Addlands *
