Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable

Nicola Davies

Nicola Davies is the author of more than 50 books for children: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in more than 10 different languages and has won major awards in the UK, US, France, Italy and Germany.

Nicola trained as a zoologist, taking a degree in Natural Sciences from King's College, Cambridge. She spent some years as a field biologist and studied humpback and sperm whales, and bats, before joining the BBC Natural History Unit as a researcher and then presenter.

Following the start of her writing career, Nicola became a senior lecturer in creative writing, at Bath Spa University but has been writing full time for over a decade. She now regularly runs workshops for children and adults to help them find their voices as writers and advocates for nature. In 2017, she was the first recipient of the SLA’s award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Non-fiction and in 2018 had four picture books longlisted for the Greenaway Award.

Find out what Nicola Davies is up to as our Writer in Residence

Neal Layton

Neal was born and raised in Chichester, West Sussex but has since lived in Newcastle, Brighton, London, Slough and Glasgow. He now lives in Portsmouth with his family. He likes living by the seaside.

His studio is a room in his house where he can make a mess. The walls are covered with pictures, drawings, scribbles, badges, photos, posters, packaging and anything else that he finds inspiring. He uses all sorts of different media to make his illustrations: pencils, paint, pens, ink, pieces of collage, biros, photocopiers, cameras, a computer, bits of stick, old toothbrushes, dough, hair, leaves, anything that comes to hand... He likes his illustrations to appear as fresh and spontaneous as possible.