Nell Leyshon

Nell Leyshon is a British novelist and award-winning dramatist. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Alpine Fellowship and as the Deputy Chair of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Prior, she served on the Management Committee for the Society of Authors. Leyshon is known best for her novel, The Colour of Milk, which was translated into multiple languages and gained international recognition, winning the Prix Interallié in France where it was also shortlisted for the Prix Femina, and voted the book of the year in Spain.

Leyshon was born in Somerset, Glastonbury, where she grew up and attended art college before moving to London. Leyshon's first career culminated in working as a Producer in TV commercials, working alongside directors such as Ridley and Tony Scott. After, she attended the University of Southampton prior to publishing her first novel, Black Dirt.

Leyshon's support for marginalized communities is shown through her radio and playwright. Her 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, Leyshon wrote her first libretto, The River Keeper, for Streetwise Opera, a charity that helps homeless communities to rebuild their lives and identities.

In 2018, she founded The Outsiders Project, a company giving voice to the unheard and marginalised members of the community of Boscombe through creative writing and photography workshops. Leyshon taught creative writing and performance, focusing on developing self-esteem and shaping the writer's unique artistic voice.

Literary work

Black Dirt (2004)

In May 2004, Leyshon's first novel, Black Dirt, was published by Picador and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize. Written in a lyrical yet spare style, Black Dirt explores the guilty silences that bind family members together - and sometimes keep them apart. It is the tale of a father and his family told, like the layering of the earth, in different tones and textures.

The Colour of Milk (2012)

In May 2012, Leyshon's novel, The Colour of Milk, was published by Penguin. Set in England in 1830, The Colour of Milk is a work of historical fiction about an illiterate farm girl's emotional and intellectual awakening and its devastating consequences.

Radio and Theatre

Leyshon's first radio play, Milk, won the Richard Imison Award. Her second drama War Bride was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award.

In 2005, Leyshon's play Comfort me with Apples won an Evening Standard Theatre Award for most promising playwright, was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award and was shortlisted for Susan Smith Blackburn Award.

Leyshon adapted Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now for the Lyceum, Sheffield which later transferred to the Lyric, Hammersmith. In 2010 her play Bedlam was the first written by a woman to be performed at Shakespeare's Globe.

Leyshon has also written plays for young people for National Theatre Connections, The Beauty Manifesto and Terra which was a dance theatre piece with choreography by Anthony Missem. She also wrote for Royal Theatre Plymouth and th her Word,, for RADA Elders.

Subsequent radio plays include Glass Eels, Soldier Boy, Writing The Century and Jess, a Woman's Hour drama about child mental health for Children in Need.

The Outsiders Project

The Outsiders Project works with members of the community of Boscombe, and the work is shown locally then shared with a wider world. The work is designed to develop authentic voices and is of exceptional quality. Leyshon's vision was to show that people sidelined from society can write, perform and create work at the highest level. The Outsiders Project supports the outsider community to push boundaries to prove they can create work of outstanding quality and worth.

The Outsiders Project has produced three works for the stage; Vodka Hunters, Secret Voices and The Truth About Men, all three as part of BEAF – Bournemouth Emerging Arts Fringe Festival 2018 and 2019.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic they launched the Tattoo Project an online initiative to gather, tell stories and find new outsider artists.

Teaching

Leyshon has been teaching for 27 years, but spent the last 17 years specialising in outsider voices. She has worked extensively with the recovery community in prisons and mental health settings. She has also worked with the Gypsy community, and has led many partnership courses for Arvon Foundation.

She has started The Lockdown Workshops a series of workshops to share her approach to writing during the lockdown.

Selected work

Novels

• Black Dirt, (Picador, 2004)
• Devotion (Picador, 2008)
• The Colour of Milk, (Penguin, 2012)
• Memoirs of a Dipper (Penguin, 2015)

Radio Dramas

• The Farm (2002) (BBC Radio 4)
• Milk (2002) (BBC Radio 4)
• Glass Eels (2003) (BBC Radio 4)
• The Home Field (2003) (BBC Radio 3)
• The House in the Trees (2004) (BBC Radio 4)
• Soldier Boy (2005) (BBC Radio 4)
• Black Dirt (BBC Radio 3)
• War Bride (2008) (BBC Radio 4)
• Sons (2009) (BBC Radio 4)
• The Iron Curtain (2011) (BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour)
• The Colour of Milk (2013) (BBC Radio 4)
• Jess's Story, Children in need, BBC Radio 4
• Three Letters (BBC Radio 3)

Theatre

• The Farm
• Milk
• Comfort me with Apples Hampstead Theatre
• Don't Look Now (adapted from the story by Daphne du Maurier), Lyric Theatre (Hammersmith)
• The Beauty Manifesto
• The River Keeper Streetwise Opera
• Glass Eels
• Bedlam, Shakespeare's Globe
• Winter, Theatre Newfoundland and Labrador
• The Word, RADA Elders group
• Barro, Gran Teatro Nacional Peru
• Terra, National Theatre Connections
• Three Letters, Royal Shakespeare Company

Personal life

Nell lives in Dorset with her partner Dominic. She has two sons.

External links

• Nell Leyshon Official Website