Nell Leyshon

Nell Leyshon is a British dramatist and novelist.

She was born in Glastonbury, England, and lives in the county of Dorset. She attended the University of Southampton, gaining a first in English Literature.

Leyshon writes regularly for Radio 4 and 3. Her plays include:

• The Farm (2002) (BBC Radio 4)
• Glass Eels (2003) (BBC Radio 4)
• The House in the Trees (2004) (BBC Radio 4)
• Soldier Boy (2005) (BBC Radio 4)
• War Bride (2008) (BBC Radio 4)
• Sons (2009) (BBC Radio 4)

Leyshon and co-writer Stephen McAnena were joint winners of the Richard Imison Memorial Award 2003 for the best dramatic work broadcast by a writer new to radio, for the play Milk. She also wrote the drama documentary The Home Field (2003) (BBC Radio 3).

Leyshon's stage plays include The Farm, published by Oberon, performed at Southwark Playhouse, London (2002). Her play Comfort me with Apples won the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright award in 2005, and was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. It was performed at Hampstead Theatre and then toured. Glass Eels was at Hampstead Theatre in 2007, and her one-act play Winter was on in Newfoundland in 2007.

Leyshon adapted the Daphne du Maurier short story "Don't Look Now" for the stage and it was performed at Lyric Hammersmith and Sheffield Lyceum.

In 2009 Paradise, a first play from Salt Factory, a collective based in Dorset, will tour the South West.

Black Dirt is Leyshon's first novel, published by Picador in 2004, also set in Somerset. It was long-listed for the Orange prize, and nominated for the Commonwealth.

Devotion and The Voice^[1] were published by Picador in 2008.

Her writing can also be found in the anthology New Writing 10 ISBN 0-330-48268-8 and Great Escapes.

In February 2010 it was announced that Leyshon had been commissioned by Shakespeare's Globe to write a drama for the theatre. She is the first woman to be asked write for the theatre since its opening in 1599.

References

1. ^ http://www.panmacmillan.com/Titles/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual%20Title&BookID=408471

External links

• nellleyshon.co.uk- Official Nell Leyshon website

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