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 settling in Nova Scotia. She and her wife live in a ramshackle farmhouse on the North Mountain surrounded by apple trees, old roses, sheep and chickens.
Blog
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 …
Finished?
I finished writing two books this winter, a memoir called Undocumented: A Different Story and a novel called Nunatak. The nub of the novel came to me ten years ago. The memoir has been in the works for twelve years. So five or six years a book. This raises some questions. Lifetime earnings …
This writing life
This writing life Stories saved my life. They go on saving my life. As a gay teenager obsessed with suicide, the stories in books saved me, though only just. Booze saved me too, though later it would start to kill me. Then the stories told by other addicts saved me. Terrible, tragic, funny stories, stories …
Publications
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