Nina Stibbe
BA Humanities, 1987 | HonDLitt, 2018
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
“My degree was everything to me. I wouldn’t be a published writer if it wasn’t for Greenwich.”
Nina Stibbe was working as a nanny in London when she first enrolled at Thames Polytechnic.
She still remembers her first visit: “I knew within moments that this was the college that I wanted to come to. Just the way the other students looked, and the course was brilliant.”
Her degree offered new opportunities and it was there that Nina found her voice as a writer. She also relished the chance to see plays and enjoy London’s nightlife.
“It opened up a whole new world of art and culture for me and made me feel I belonged in the middle of it.”
After her degree, Nina went into publishing. But her life took another turn in 2013 when Penguin published the letters she’d sent her sister during her undergraduate years as Love, Nina, and in 2016, Nick Hornby adapted the book for the BBC with Helena Bonham-Carter starring.
Nina’s love for her college shines through Love, Nina. “Thames Polytechnic is very good, and I liked being at college. Sometimes I see a reflection of myself walking along with my little bag of books and I feel… thrilled is the only word I can think of.”
Nina’s fifth book, Reasons to be Cheerful, comes out in March.
Nina received a Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the university in 2018.
Since releasing Reasons to be Cheerful in March 2019, Nina has received numerous awards and recognition of her work. The novel received the 2019 Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, and the 2020 Comedy Women in Print Award for comic fiction.
Described by judges as “genuinely hilarious” and “beautifully observed”, the novel scooped the latter prize for the year’s best comic novel from a star-studded shortlist that included Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson, The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary and Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams.
Nina Stibbe
BA Humanities, 1987 | HonDLitt, 2018
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
“My degree was everything to me. I wouldn’t be a published writer if it wasn’t for Greenwich.”
Nina Stibbe was working as a nanny in London when she first enrolled at Thames Polytechnic.
She still remembers her first visit: “I knew within moments that this was the college that I wanted to come to. Just the way the other students looked, and the course was brilliant.”
Her degree offered new opportunities and it was there that Nina found her voice as a writer. She also relished the chance to see plays and enjoy London’s nightlife.
“It opened up a whole new world of art and culture for me and made me feel I belonged in the middle of it.”
After her degree, Nina went into publishing. But her life took another turn in 2013 when Penguin published the letters she’d sent her sister during her undergraduate years as Love, Nina, and in 2016, Nick Hornby adapted the book for the BBC with Helena Bonham-Carter starring.
Nina’s love for her college shines through Love, Nina. “Thames Polytechnic is very good, and I liked being at college. Sometimes I see a reflection of myself walking along with my little bag of books and I feel… thrilled is the only word I can think of.”
Nina’s fifth book, Reasons to be Cheerful, comes out in March.
Nina received a Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the university in 2018.
Since releasing Reasons to be Cheerful in March 2019, Nina has received numerous awards and recognition of her work. The novel received the 2019 Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, and the 2020 Comedy Women in Print Award for comic fiction.
Described by judges as “genuinely hilarious” and “beautifully observed”, the novel scooped the latter prize for the year’s best comic novel from a star-studded shortlist that included Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson, The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary and Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams.
