About
Nina Newington is an award winning author and gardener. British by birth, she lived in Hong Kong, Germany, Israel, England, Nigeria and the US before immigrating to Canada. She and her wife live in a ramshackle farmhouse on the North Mountain of Nova Scotia on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw people. Her new novel, Cardinal Divide, is due out in September 2020 from Guernica Editions.
Blog
Something happened
On the first of May we take out a window high up in the old barn. Then we wait. The day my eye catches the swoop and flick, wings like a drawn bow, body and tail the arrow, delight soars in me. Followed by the gulp of mingled grief and relief. Because I’m always afraid …
From a letter to a friend who just joined Extinction Rebellion and is suffering full-blown climate grief.
Yes, the grief at what is happening to the beautiful living earth is hard to bear. Actually, the only thing that has really helped me is to be able to say with all my heart to the swallows, the lichens, the sweat bees, ‘I’m doing what I can. I will do what I can.’ Not …
Good News
Guernica Editions is going to publish my new novel, now called Cardinal Divide, in 2020. The contract is signed, the manuscript in the hands of their editor. I don’t know a lot about Guernica Editions except that they’ve been around for forty years, have an interesting list and I like their covers. Last winter I …
Publications
FORTHCOMING! A new novel, Cardinal Divide, will be published by Guernica Editions in September, 2020, pandemic be damned.
My first novel:
Through stunning, magnetic, precise prose, Newington paints the portrait of a world both gorgeous and terrifying; we are taken into the consciousness of the daughter of a British diplomat during the Nigerian Civil War, a child trying to puzzle through the mysteries of family, culture, gender, and place. There are no conclusions here; the world reveals itself in its bafflement, its losses and betrayals, counterbalanced by moments of beauty that assuage, delight, and fascinate. This is a beautiful book! — Carol Potter, poet, Antioch University
Where Bones Dance TLS review 2007