Gregory Norminton

Gregory Norminton was born in Berkshire in 1976, of Franco-Belgo-Irish parentage. He was educated at Wellington College and studied English at Oxford University, before studying drama at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. The “profession” of actor allowed him to devote his entire time to writing and his first novel, The Ship of Fools, was published by Sceptre in 2002. It was followed in 2004 by Arts and Wonders, for which he was awarded an Arts Council Writers Award. Following a brief spell in the American Midwest, he wrote a third novel, Ghost Portrait, which was published in 2005, when he also took part in a conservation-themed television series, Planet Action, which was filmed in Panama, Belize, Malaysia and Cambodia.

Gregory Norminton moved to Edinburgh in 2007, where he finished a fourth novel, Serious Things, which was published to great acclaim and derisory sales in 2008. In 2010 he married the dedicatee of this book of aphorisms. In 2011 he took up a lectureship in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. As well as writing novels, Gregory Norminton has translated Gustave Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, published short stories, written plays for radio and appeared several times on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. He recently edited a collection of original fiction by major UK authors, Out of Chaos – stories for our shared planet, which was published by Oneworld in 2013. Vagabond Voices published his collection of short stories, Thumbnails, in 2013.