Dr Dylin Hardcastle

Dr Dylin Hardcastle (1993) is an award-winning writer, artist, and former Provost’s Scholar at the University of Oxford.

Dylin is the author of four books. His work has been published to critical acclaim in eleven territories and translated into eight languages. His most recent novel, A Language of Limbs, won the 2023 Kathleen Mitchell Award, was shortlisted for Dymocks Book of the Year 2024, Longlisted for the Voss Literary Prize and the 2025 Stella Prize, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and a TIME 100 Must-Read Book of 2025. A Language of Limbs has been optioned by Curio (Sony Pictures) and is in development for television. Dylin is the lead writer on the novel’s adaptation.

Dylin co-wrote and co-directed Cloudy River with Charlie Ford. Made with principal funding from Screen Australia and support from Queer Screen, Cloudy River premiered at the Mardi Gras Film Festival in 2020, was screened at numerous film festivals around the world, and was later acquired by SBS.

After working as a research assistant in world literature at the University of Oxford, Dylin completed a PhD in Creative Writing at UNSW in Sydney in 2025 with his thesis, Uncanny Disturbances in Contemporary Queer Literature. Previously, in 2018, Dylin was one of the first two Australians to study as a Provost’s Scholar at Worcester College at the University of Oxford where he wrote his third novel, Below Deck, under the supervision of Sir Jonathan Bate.

Dylin is also the co-creator of FRUITS ZINE – a quarterly comic of ‘erotic stories for fruity people’ which they make in collaboration with artist Peo Michie. You can support FRUITS ZINE via Patreon.

As a visual artist, Dylin has travelled to Antarctica, South America and Europe for artist residencies, and has exhibited his paintings in Australia and the UK.

You can stay up to date with Dylin’s work by following him on Instagram or through his Substack, Into the Underland.