Neil Ansell spent five years living on a remote hillside in Wales, and wrote his first book, Deep Country, about the experience. Since that time, he has become an award-winning television journalist with the BBC. He has travelled in over fifty countries and has written for the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Big Issue.
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The Literature tent is being hosted by Black Chav & White Coon. Yes you read that right. Chav & Coon aka Michael Barnes-Wynters & Michael Mayhew. Welcome to the Nova Literature Harem to words, Chav & Coon will be your emotional glue, introducing you to this years ambitious and delightful lineup of readers, thinkers, writers, challengers to banality and hum drum living. Having been separated @ birth, this black man / white man exchange each other’s faces, share identity, and become Chav & Coon. ??Come share words with us and join Chav & Coon in their adventure at Nova. Apart from filing the air with raining words / epileptic sounds / they will present a live performance of ‘War of the Worlds’ as well as present a new work / BULL. As in John Bull .
Camarade A special event for NOVA’s spoken word programme this event continues a groundbreaking series, Camarade, where nine pairs of Europe’s most vital poets will read original collaborations written specifically, in partnership, for this evening and which displays the creativity and depth of contemporary innovative poetry. Featuring: Carol Watts & George Szirtes, Tom Jenks & Philip Terry, Emma Bennett & Holly Pester, Andy Spragg & David Berridge, Maria Ferencuhova & Frances Kruk, Tim Atkins & Harry Gilonis, Marcus Slease & Richard Barrett, Joe Dunthorne & Sam Riviere, Simon Barraclough & Isobel Dixon
Katy Darby High drama and thrilling mystery mix in The Whores’ Asylum, a gothic literary debut set in the sordid backstreets of Oxford’s Jericho, where two friends are torn apart by a mysterious and beautiful woman who is not what she seems. Or is she?
Katy studied English Literature at Somerville College, Oxford and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she received the David Higham Award. Her fiction has been read on BBC Radio, and she has published stories in magazines including Slice, Mslexia and The London Magazine, as well as winning prizes in several international fiction competitions.
Simon Gandolfi - Travel and The Man Thing - Nova is delighted to welcome travel writer and intrepid septuagenarian Simon Gandolfi. His exploits on a motorbike are outrageously irresponsible and undeniably liberating, Gandolfi's stories will fire the imaginations of every traveller, young or old.
Rachel Lichtenstein is an artist, writer and curator. She is currently writing a trilogy of non-fiction books for Hamish Hamilton on different London streets. The first, On Brick Lane, was published in 2007, to much critical acclaim and shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize. Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden is the second in the series. A volume on Portobello Road will follow.
Third Nature Curated Literature Events Kirsteen McNish is Creative Director for www.thirdnature.co.uk. Kirsteen works in arts and cultural management and specially commissioned projects involving leading authors, artists, filmakers and musicians, producing high profile events with arts organisations and creative individuals.
Cornelius Medvei (third nature) Cornelius Medvei’s novel Caroline was so popular one independent bookshop even went so far as to write and record a song about it! Here at Nova Cornelius will read passages from his leftfield book that is tender, funny and endlessly enjoyable.
Helen Gordon – Landfall (third nature) An audience with former associate editor of Granta magazine and new novelist Helen Gordon and around her first and critically acclaimed new novel “Landfall.” Alice Robinson, art critic for a magazine so fashionable it's just gone out of business, finds herself agreeing to housesit for her parents. Moving back home to a suburbia she thought long behind her, she finds herself reconnecting with a different landscape, a fraught and painful past.
Alex Preston – The Revelations (third nature) Alex Preston writes and reviews for the New Statesman and the Observer and is a regular panellist on BBC2’s The Review Show. His first novel The Revelations is a gripping sinister novel studying how one weekend in London changes the lives of four friends forever as they look for meaning in a dark and disenchanted world that sends shockwaves as it rapidly unfurls at a frightening pace.
Michael Smith Triple Bill (third nature) Nova are excited to present an exclusive offering from author, filmmaker and Culture Show presenter Michael Smith. This event presents an exclusive selection of films for Nova that study both the urban, rural and psychogeographical landscape of the UK including previously unseen new work. Michael will also read from his new unpublished work “Lost In London” (working title) and excerpts from the celebrated cult bestseller “Giro Playboy”.
Paul Trynka has interviewed over two hundred friends, ex-lovers and fellow musicians in order to write the definitive biography of Bowie. The result is a compelling, intimate and revealing book that will appeal to Bowie's millions of fans around the world.
Starman is packed to bursting with enough fresh perspectives, stories and uncovered facts… to supersede your entire shelf-full of Bowie tomes… an astonishing tale, ultimately shot through with humanity; in Trynka’s hands, Bowie becomes both tangible yet untouchable’ Record Collector ‘Superb and thoughtful’ Mail on Sunday. ‘(A) probing and stylish biography’ Independent