About
www.opentopublic.com.au is the online home of Nigel Featherstone.
Nigel is the author of over 40 published short stories with work appearing in 17 Australian literary journals, including Meanjin, Island and Overland. He has had two collections of short fiction published – Homelife (1999) and Joy (2000). The Australian Book Review described the latter as ‘beautifully poised… warm, lush, humane’, and in its own review Overland noted, ‘a distinctive voice, offering unexpected insights into relations between people’.
His first novel, Remnants (Pandanus Books), appeared in 2005 and has been described as ‘a solid exploration of age, written with sensitivity and skill’ (Eureka Street), ‘a fine piece of fiction deserving of a wide audience’ (Wet Ink), and ‘a beautifully written book’ (Mercury Magazine).
Nigel has received gongs in various competitions, including the ‘My Brother Jack’ Glen Eira Literary Awards, the Foothills of the Dandenongs Literary Competition, and the University of Canberra National Short Story Competition. His work has also been permanently installed in the pavements of Canberra City as part of the Festival of Contemporary Arts’ Words on Walls project.
Since 2007 Nigel has been a writer for Panorama, the arts magazine of the Canberra Times. In 2009, he was an artist-in-residence at Bundanon, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd’s gift to the Australian people, and in 2010 he participated in the Cataract Gorge Artist-in-Residence Program, thanks to the City of Launceston, Tasmania. Nigel is currently working on his second novel.
Born in Sydney, Nigel now lives in the Australian Capital Territory, his long-time partner Tim Phillips just over the border in New South Wales. Although he originally trained as a landscape architect, and landscape architecture was his profession for the first decade or so of his working life, he now divides his time between writing and arts development.
He maintains the Under the counter or a flutter in the dovecot blog, where he posts the First Word columns he writes for the Canberra Times and other oddities.
You can contact Nigel on nigel@opentopublic.com.au