Trish Nicholson

Former columnist and features writer, published in UK and Australian national media, Trish Nicholson writes occasional short stories and lots of ‘narrative non-fiction’ – deeply researched facts written in an accessible and entertaining way.

Her short stories have won international prizes, and her latest travel memoir, Inside the Crocodile: the Papua New Guinea Journals, is nominated for the People’s Book Prize. You, the readers, judge this literary award, so you can read an extract of ‘Crocodile’ and vote for it on the People’s Book Prize website.

Trish has travelled worldwide, trekking extensively in South America, East Africa, Papua New Guinea, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. She shares with you her spectacular 100-mile mountain trek in the hidden Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan in her popular ebook Journey in Bhutan: Himalayan Trek in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon.

Trish also spent twenty years on aid and development work and on research in the Asia Pacific region – in Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Australia. You can read about her frustrations and triumphs in Papua New Guinea – the most culturally diverse nation on earth – in Inside the Crocodile: the Papua New Guinea Journals. In this candid travel memoir, Trish shares the stories of local people she worked with in truly remote places, but beware, ‘Crocodile’ will make you laugh out loud one minute and cry the next.

Sharing is what Trish does best and she has given many writers’ workshops. If you want to write your own book, be it memoir, travelogue, history, biography, self-help or even a text book, she will help you do that with all the tips and techniques you need to take you from your initial idea, right through planning, researching, writing, editing, publishing and marketing your book. Writing Your Nonfiction Book: the complete guide to becoming an author, truly is ‘complete’, and contains much advice for fiction writers, too. As a reviewer said: ‘Don’t write till you read this.’

Trish’s background is in social anthropology (she was awarded a PhD in 1997 for her thesis on culture change), and her obsession with observing and scribbling is matched by her love of photography and catching that unforgettable, telling moment. Both her travel books are illustrated with original colour photographs which she does not post anywhere else.

Trish’s origins are in the Isle of Man (making her part Celtic, part Viking and unsure which is which), but she now lives on a hillside in New Zealand and dedicates herself to her native tree plantings and to her ‘work in progress’ – a study of storytellers and their stories through time and place – a life-long journey and labour of love that she expects to have ready for submission in 2016.

To keep track of Trish’s progress, follow her on Twitter @TrishaNicholson and on her website, Words in the Treehouse – where there really is a treehouse you can visit.

Trish Nicholson’s earlier publications include works on human resource management, applied anthropology, popular science, responsible tourism, ethnographic travel, and creative writing.