Nell Leyshon
Encyclopedia
Nell Leyshon is a British dramatist and novelist.

She was born in Glastonbury
Glastonbury
Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,784 in the 2001 census...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and lives in the county
County
A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain modern nations. Historically in mainland Europe, the original French term, comté, and its equivalents in other languages denoted a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain...

 of Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

. She attended the University of Southampton
University of Southampton
The University of Southampton is a British public university located in the city of Southampton, England, a member of the Russell Group. The origins of the university can be dated back to the founding of the Hartley Institution in 1862 by Henry Robertson Hartley. In 1902, the Institution developed...

, gaining a first in English Literature.

Leyshon writes regularly for Radio 4 and 3. Her plays include:
  • The Farm (2002) (BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

    )
  • Glass Eels (2003) (BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

    )
  • The House in the Trees (2004) (BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

    )
  • Soldier Boy (2005) (BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

    )
  • War Bride (2008) (BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

    )
  • Sons (2009) (BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4
    BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

    )


Leyshon and co-writer Stephen McAnena
Stephen McAnena
Stephen McAnena is a writer from Belfast, Northern Ireland.He wrote the short film The Good Son , nominated for the Critics' Week Award at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. This was followed by the BBC Schools film Some Things I Don't Know , nominated for a BAFTA in 2001...

 were joint winners of the Richard Imison Memorial Award 2003 for the best dramatic work broadcast by a writer new to radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, for the play Milk. She also wrote the drama documentary The Home Field (2003) (BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

).

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
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE was a British author and playwright.Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now". The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock.Her elder sister was...

 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 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.

External links

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