About Me

Nell Leyshon is a British dramatist and novelist born in Glastonbury, Somerset. At the age of eleven, she moved to a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels.

Her education was mixed: grammar school, comprehensive, progressive school. She followed this with a year at art college before moving to London.

A first career culminated in working as a Production Assistant then Producer in TV commercials for directors including Ridley and Tony Scott. An early attempt at writing made her realise she needed some structure and an education. She gave up her film work and spent a year in Spain.

In 1988 she had her first son and went to the University of Southampton as a mature student. After graduating she had her second son and six months after he was born she started writing seriously. Her first attempts at novels were with a baby on her lap. She burned a lot of the early writing, and finally started on Black Dirt, which was her first published novel.

When she was struggling with writing prose, she attempted a radio play and it got her a commission from BBC Radio 4. That play, Milk, went on to win the Richard Imison Award for best first radio play. She then attempted a play The Farm, which was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award.

Black Dirt came out in 2005 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize.

In the subsequent years, she alternated the three forms: prose, drama and radio.

Her third novel, The Colour of Milk, came out from Penguin in May 2012 and was published worldwide, winning the Prix de l’Union Interalliee and was nominated for the Prix Femina. It was voted the book of the year in Spain. Memoirs of a Dipper was published in 2015.

Her second play, Comfort me with Apples, won an Evening Standard Award for the most promising playwright, was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, and nominated for an Olivier Award. She adapted Don’t Look Now for Sheffield and the Lyric, Hammersmith. The play Bedlam was the first play written by a woman to be performed at Shakespeare’s Globe. She has written plays for National Theatre Connections, Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador, Theatre Royal, Plymouth, and RADA.

Her radio work includes many dramas for BBC Radio 3 and 4, including the play Glass Eels, and a special Women’s Hour series on teenage mental health.

In 2014 she wrote her first libretto, The River Keeper, for Streetwise Opera, who work with homeless people.

While her children were young, Nell taught adult students wanting to return to education. As her children got older she used her teaching skills to work with
marginalised communities, including recovering addicts, mental health service users, gypsies and, in Labrador, aboriginal peoples. She taught and mentored creative writing and performance, focusing on developing skills and self esteem, and, always, the writer’s own original voice.

She is on the Management Committee for the Society of Authors, and an occasional lecturer at Goldsmiths University.

Interviews

International working

International working
2016 was the 400th anniversary of the deaths of both Shakespeare and Cervantes, two giants of world literature. British Council and Hay Festival published an excellent anthology of contemporary stories inspired by both writers, and I made a contribution as ...

Entrevista con Luisa Cabello

Nell Leyshon trabajó con marginados, De ahí nació la protagonista del "Del color de la leche" Aperitivo de la entrevista realizada por Luisa Cabello a Nell Leyshon por el libro "Del color de la leche" (Sexto Piso). Trabajando con gente ...

“El Show de Gary”, una entrevista con Nell Leyshon

El día de hoy gracias a Editorial Sexto Piso tenemos el privilegio de conversar con Nell Leyshon, una distinguida escritora de obras de Teatro y de Novelas, quien en México exitosamente ha publicado "El Show de Gary" y "El color ...

Nell Leyshon y el placer de escribir en primera persona

Nell Leyshon y el placer de escribir en primera persona
Liliana Martínez Polo | El Tiempo ‘El show de Gary’ es el título en español de la novela que la británica Nell Leyshon tituló en inglés ‘Memorias de un carterista’ (‘Memoirs of a Dipper’). En su idioma explica la esencia de ...

Interview with the Independent

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It is about 10 minutes into my interview with the award-winning playwright and author Nell Leyshon, and already she is nicking my stuff. “Look what those workmen are doing!” she says, pointing out of the window of the Soho café, ...

Hay Festival interview 2012

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The playwright in residence Nell Leyshon has been picking up material from around Hay festival which will go in her play. (Guardian, June 2012) This year, for the first time, the Hay Festival has a playwright-in-residence. Nell Leyshon has spent ...

Bocas Literary Festival

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To read the full article, visit the website of Art, Recognition, Culture… 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, who died on the same day, 23 April, in 1616. In the four ...

Bocas: The Story of My Story

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Ahead of her trip to the Bocas Lit Fest, novelist and playwright Nell Leyshon reflects on her experience of writing a short story inspired by Cervantes for the new anthology Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories After Shakespeare and Cervantes ...

Guardian Interview

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Shakespeare's Globe has just commissioned its first ever play by a woman. What does Nell Leyshon have planned? (interview by Andrew Dickson for The Guardian, February 2010) If playwright Nell Leyshon is ­overawed by the prospect of ­making history, she's ...

“Front Row” BBC Radio 4

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Playwright and novelist Nell Leyshon talks to Kirsty Lang her latest book, Memoirs of a Dipper, the story of a young boy born into a life of crime against the backdrop of 1980s London. (recorded June 2015) Listen to the ...