Nicola Barker

Nicola Barker
Born	30 March 1966 (1966-03-30) (age 45) Ely, England
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	United Kingdom
Period	1994-present

Nicola Barker (born 30 March 1966, Ely, Cambridgeshire, England) is an English novelist and short story writer.

Typically she writes about damaged or eccentric people in mundane situations, and has a fondness for bleak, isolated settings. Wide Open and Behindlings are set respectively on the Isle of Sheppey and Canvey Island. Her 2004 novel, Clear, is set in London during David Blaine's Above the Below 44 day fast in London in 2003.

Barker's novel Darkmans won the 2008 Hawthornden Prize. Patrick Ness' Guardian review described the book as "phenomenally good" despite it being a "838-page epic with little describable plot, taking place over just a few days and set in...Ashford" ^[1]

Novels

• Reversed Forecast (1994)
• Small Holdings (1995)
• Wide Open (1998) (winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award award, 2000)
• Five Miles from Outer Hope (2000)
• Behindlings (2002)
• Clear: A Transparent Novel (2004)
• Darkmans (2007) (Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2007)
• Burley Cross Postbox Theft^[2] (available as an iPhone app)

Collections of stories

• Love Your Enemies (1993) (winner of the David Higham Prize for Fiction)
• Heading Inland (1996)
• The Three Button Trick: Selected Stories (2001)

Quotation

'There are writers who exist to confirm people's feelings about themselves and to make them feel comforted or not alone. That's the opposite to what I do. I'm presenting people with unacceptable or hostile characters, and my desire is to make them understood.' ^[3]

External links

• Burley Cross Postbox Theft iPhone App
• Nicola Barker at Contemporary Writers
• Nicola Barker at the Internet Book List

References

1. ^ Ness, Patrick: Review: Book of the week The Guardian 5th May 2007
2. ^ [1] The Observer Hot List 2010
3. ^ [2] Interview in The Observer 29 April 2007

Persondata
Name	Barker, Nicola
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	30 March 1966
Place of birth	Ely, England
Date of death
Place of death