Joel Harvey · Tokyo
Thirty years of stories, screenplays, poems and memoir — gathered from six scattered archives into a single catalogue.
The pieces closest to finished.
A memory-transmission device, a hikikomori nephew, Tokyo. Grew out of “The Shoe Box” and the Parting Gift world. Revised manuscript, story bible and eleven built scenes, with Corvid 26 and Felix Act 1 adapted for the screen alongside it.
The largest single manuscript, revised in parallel with its own screenplay adaptation.
Bangkok airport, a stolen wallet, the kindness of strangers, and a job in Tokyo at the end of it.
Three-strand literary science fiction: a grieving scientist, crows that know too much, and an AI translator.
The most-iterated script in the drawer — six years of drafts on a dark speculative premise.
| Title | Latest draft | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Humane (ELFS) | 2024 | Feature. Six years of drafts; pitch document written |
| The Box | 2024 | Feature, in two versions |
| Fillet Mignon | 2024 | Feature |
| Corvid 26 | 2026 | Adapted from the short story; submission format |
| Felix — Act 1 | 2026 | First act of the Listening Box adaptation |
| A Fresh Start | 2026 | Adapted alongside the novel |
| Serapeum | 2018 | Full script with a one-page pitch |
| the emperor | 2018 | Earlier work |
| Title | Form | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Parting Gift | Novel | John, May, the device, the whales. The central long work |
| The Shoe Box | Short story | Parting Gift compressed into a single chapter — 1,030 words |
| Corvid 26 | Short story | Grief, crows, and a machine translator — 1,956 words |
| Someone Else’s Shoes | Short story | — |
| Almost Abducted | Short story | 2026 |
| Becoming Unstuck | Life writing | Bangkok, a stolen wallet, and the way out — 2,000 words |
| The Memoir | Memoir | In fragments — an opening, a middle, an ending. Fifty-five houses is the arc |
| Why Vipassana Is Truth | Essay | Twenty-two years of practice, reckoned with |
| Letter to The Times | Essay | On monochrome phones |
Forty-plus poems written across Tokyo, Singapore and London. Enough for a pamphlet: pick fifteen, order them, and the collection exists. These are the ones it would be built around.
| Poem | Register |
|---|---|
| Don’t Mourn Me | Pre-mortem; a whole life compressed. The anchor poem |
| Mum | Cambodia. Unflinching and tender at once |
| The In-Between | 2018. Sober, and rebuilding |
| Sangha | Community against tribalism |
| Hold Fast | The refrain that threads the whole body of work |
| Tokyo · Komorebi · August Balcony Sunrise | The Japan sequence — four haiku, ending in Siena |
| Quantum Leap as a Sonnet | A jumping spider, a house move, and a galaxy. The wildcard |
Daily koans, teachings and verses — and the haiku from the Japan sequence — go out on nervy05peak.substack.com.
Every catalogued piece, full text where the source could be read — 243 works. Twenty-six have no text here because their originals are binary (Pages, Final Draft and Scrivener files); those are listed but not readable.