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
Strange Happenings launch Cardinal Divide playlist
Check out the new one in the list, Garden Party.
Strange Happenings launch Cardinal Divide: Now You See Me
Here’s another clip from our North Mountain Happening. Video and editing by Adam Zinzan. Filmed on location in Mount Hanley, Nova Scotia. There are more of these to come… To order Cardinal Divide directly from the publisher: https://www.guernicaeditions.com/title/9781771834421 Free shipping in Canada
About that Happening, and a Jingle
Another snippet from our North Mountain Happening, this time a short jingle and some dancing. Music and lyrics by Allison Cornell, video Adam Zinzan. Filmed in Mount Hanley, Nova Scotia. Who are these people and what was this Happening, you might ask? Here is the invitation I sent out to a motley assortment of friends …
Publications
Guernica Editions, Fall 2020
446 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9781771834421
ISBN10: 1771834420
English
$20.00 Canada, $17.95 US, £11.95 UK
A father comes out to his daughter as a woman. Or at least, he was once a woman. It’s complicated. Funny. Painful. Eventually joyful. Meanwhile the daughter, who was adopted, has her own identity issues. At the Aboriginal addictions treatment centre where she works, everyone assumes she is indigenous. But is she? How can she find out? Cardinal Divide explores the hunger for certainty and the mutability of identity, whether of gender, race or sexuality. Authenticity isn’t simple. Acting as somebody else is simultaneously a way to deceive and to explore the world. Characters who pass as male, as white, as straight, straddle the cardinal divides. And then, sometimes, passing is becoming.
https://www.guernicaeditions.com/title/9781771834421 Free shipping in Canada
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