Nicky Singer

To Play or Not to Play?

Nicky — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:24:49 +0000

Nicky muses on the difference between writing a play and a novel here: http://www.foyles.co.uk/blog-to-play-or-not-to-play

Island (Theatre)

Nicky — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:10:26 +0000

Check out Island - my new play at the National Theatre (Cottesloe 2012). It's about ice-bears and ways of knowing. 'Compelling, moving drama.' The Independent.

Heartland (Aerial theatre and dance)

Nicky — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:47:40 +0000

I collaborated with Scarabeus Aerial Theatre and Candoco Dance Company to create Heartland, a story of imprisonment and freedom, and the longing for the lands of home and heart – based on the Minotaur/Icarus legends. The show toured six outdoor festivals in 2011 and culminated in a site specific show (with music by Jude Obermuller) to celebrate the opening of Platform at the old Hornsey Road Baths, London N7.

The Flask

Nicky — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:42 +0000

My new novel The Flask - is out now! It's about songs and souls and things which live in bottles...

Listening Books

Nicky — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:29:52 +0000

Listening Books is a UK charity providing a fantastic selection of high-quality audiobooks to over 17000 people across the UK who find it difficult or impossible to read due to illness or disability.

Now available: Feather Boy.

Knight Crew (Opera)

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:28:38 +0000

Opera Production

Feather Boy (Theatre)

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:27:16 +0000

Theatre production

Feather Boy (TV)

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:14:34 +0000

Television adaptation

Knight Crew

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:59:52 +0000

Buy this book

After a gang feud claims its first life, violence escalates. But then the prophetic words of a strange old baglady start to hit home, and Art and the girl he loves have one chance to make good, one chance to bring honour and peace to a murderous world.

Fierce tender and unflinching, Knight Crew breathes the passions of ancient legend into a contemporary wasteland – passions that can create or destroy.

‘A story for this generation…written with love, passion and intelligence.‘ Benjamin Zephaniah

Nicky says:

Young people get a very bad press these days. According to the newspapers, there are a lot

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Feather Boy

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:58:57 +0000

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Catherine would say it all began in a time that is yesterday and tomorrow and eternally present. But then Catherine’s a storyteller. I’m not a storyteller. I’m just the guy it happened to.

Robert is the class victim, the guy who’s never picked for the team. So noone is more surprised than Robert himself when a strange old lady sends him on a quest to solve the mystery of Chance House. Legend has it that a boy fell to his death from an upper window. But what has this past to do with Robert’s future?

To get to the

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Doll

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:57:33 +0000

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Tilly: Sometimes I think my brain is full of locked boxes. And that one day there will be too many boxes and my brain will explode. Then fourteen years of scary things will cascade to the floor and I’ll finally have to look. But not now. Not yet.

Jan: The stars of the cold north are not visible to southern eyes, the eyes of his mother. If he were a real Chilean boy, what stars would shine for him? How can he imagine his mother if he cannot imagine her sky?

We are the misfits. We are the motherless. We share so much But

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The Innocent’s Story

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:56:26 +0000

Buy this book

I’m not quite the person I was at 5.11pm yesterday afternoon. In fact, I may not be a person at all…

When Cassina is blown up in a bomb attack, life as she knows it is over. Except that she doesn’t die. Cassina becomes a para-spirit – a presence that can live in other people’s minds. Nobody knows she’s there, but she can see their thoughts and fell their emotions. She just can’t do a thing to change them.

Being in the minds of her grieving parents is not good. Being in mad Aunt Lou’s brain is an eye-opener.

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Gem X

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:55:37 +0000

Buy this book

Maxo Strange is a GemX, the most perfect human ever made. Top in social class, in looks, in intelligence. . . until the day he wakes up and discovers a crack in his face. Repulsed and terrified, that crack starts him on a journey to places he hardly knows exist. Into the world of the Dreggies, the wretched underclass of imperfect people who live outside the Polis. Into the world of his father, the Polis’s chief scientist who ravaged human life to create the GemXs. And into the life of Gala and Stretch, Dreggies who ‘disappeared’ while

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The Good, The Bad and the Opera

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:50:39 +0000

An article about the Prison System, published on Notes From The Slush Pile

Click here to read the article

Does this bomb cross your boundary?

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:49:52 +0000

My novel – The Innocent’s Story – is a dangerous book. I didn’t know that when I wrote it. I thought it was a serious and moral attempt to contextualise terrorism for children. If the idea of talking to children about suicide bombing makes you want to turn the page, you’re not the only one. When they received the manuscript of The Innocent’s Story, my American publishers set about cancelling my contracts with immediate effect. So much for the Land of the Free. I thought things might be different here, not least because I had a good track record: my

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Me, Knight Crew and the Prison System

Nicky — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:28:34 +0000

Bass Robert Winslade Anderson playing the OG/Mordec character in Knight Crew and bearing an uncanny resemblance to my friend Khaine

My research for Knight Crew brought me into contact with a man called Khaine, who I visited in prison for two and a half years. During that time I learnt alot about the British ‘justice’ system and Africa and street language and about being black in a white world. I was often angry, often upset. I was also incredibly moved by some of the goodness I found in very dark places. Some of that story – which fed into Knight

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Knight Crew BBC2 17th June 9pm

Nicky — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:18:26 +0000

Mordec gets down and dirty with the Knight Crew

Well – it’s just about to happen. In ‘Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne’ (three consecutive Thursdays from 17th June) you can follow the journeys of some of the amazing kids who took part in my operatic version of Knight Crew the novel (check under Books on this site) with music by the wonderful Julian Philips. I’m missing it.

Marvellous young minds

Nicky — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:00:05 +0000

Some future writing stars

At St Mary’s Primary school in East Grinstead to give a workshop to some 10 and 11 year olds. It’s such a privilege to work with people with such glorious, open minds.

Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne…

Nicky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:12:01 +0000

Desi Hayward, Gareth Malone and a hoodie - but which is which?

Would you want to meet either of these characters on a dark knight?

Knight Crew Smash it!

Nicky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:36 +0000

I'm the one in the middle wearing - er - the wrong colour - Saxon colours!

Knight Crew the opera opens at Glyndebourne to four star reviews in The Independent and The Guardian and a call for a West End transfer from Gramophone. To quote: This or Mama Mia? No competition. But what I feel about that is nothing to the way I feel about all the people who have made this project possible – most especially the extraordinary chorus of young people who have worked their socks off to become my Knight Crew. LEGEND! Days later

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