Nicola Davies

Nicola Davies started her career as a Zoologist. She then worked for the BBC Natural History Unit for ten years as a researcher and presenter for a number of natural history programmes including ‘The Really Wild Show, before becoming a freelance writer.

Nicola’s first children’s book Big Blue Whale, one of Walker Books’ award winning Read and Wonder series, won a number of awards on publication by Candlewick in the U.S. and continues to be reviewed in the U.K. today. Since then Nicola has written a number of other books for the Read and Wonder series including Bat Loves the Night and One Tiny Turtle. The most recent title Nicola has written for this series Surprising Sharks has recently been honored in the non-fiction category of the Boston Globe-Horn Book awards. Ice Bear about Polar bears and Inuit in the Arctic was published in 2005 and won the English Society Award for young non fiction.

Nicola’s book Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable was published in August 2004 in the UK and September 2004 in the US. An exhibition based on this title ran at the Rothchilds Museum.

Poo was followed in 2006 by Extreme Animals, a book about animal survival tactics, in 2007 with What's Eating You? about parasites, and in 2009 by Just the Right Size all of which have been illustrated by Neal Layton.

Nicola has just completed her first short fiction series 'Silver Street Farm' and the four books: Welcome to Silver Street Farm, Escape From Silver Street Farm, All Aboard and Silver Street Farm and Spring Fever at Silver Street Farm will be published by Walker Books in February 2011.

Nicola's first children’s novel Home was published by Walker Books and nominated for the Branford Boases Award. Her next novel A Girl Called Dog will be published by Random House Children's Books in April 2011.

Nicola is currently an associate lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University College.

Under the pseudonymn Stevie Morgan, Nicola is the author of three novels for adults published by Hodder and Stoughton: Delphinium Blues, Fly Away Peter and Checking Out.

To see Nicola talk about why she writes books please follow the link to her youtube video:

Review quotes for Nicola’s children’s titles:
‘Breaking the mould of children’s non fiction’ - Radio 4

‘A marvellous meeting with a Blue Whale...fills the reader with wonder...stranger than any fiction...' - Observer

'Nicola Davies is an author who gets the balance exactly right. Her scientific love of the particular translates into the precise well chosen language that so appeals to children. There is not a word too many, there is not a word out of place ... near-poetic narrative' - Times Educational Supplement

'I was caught, hook, line and sinker...' - the Guardian

Review quotes for Nicola’s adult fiction
'I loved this book so much I could have eaten it!' - the Daily Mail

'Unpredictable, a lot more than can be said of most popular fiction' - the Big Issue