Layla (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781908434296)

Nina de la Mer is a Scottish novelist who lives and works in Brighton. After studying modern languages at the University of Sussex, de la Mer worked for ten years in book publishing before she began writing fiction herself.

Shortlisted for the 2010 Writer's Retreat Competition and warmly and widely reviewed, her debut novel, 4 a.m., was published in 2011 by Myriad. In 2012, de la Mer was awarded an Arts Council England Grant for the Arts to write her second novel. Layla was published in February 2014 and saw de la Mer's work compared to that of James Kelman and Alan Bissett, who declared Nina 'a vital British novelist'. Between her day job as an e-learning scriptwriter and the practical demands of looking after her two young children, de la Mer is currently writing a third novel, The Decadents, an ensemble piece about two very different Brighton families.

An enthusiastic and committed writer, de la Mer regularly appears at salons such as Grit Lit and Ace Stories, has contributed original short stories to spoken word events and has helped judge several writing competitions. Her work has been covered in the press in outlets as varied as the Guardian, Hello! Magazine, The Daily Record and The Herald, whose reviewer remarked of her debut: 'It's about time we had a female Irvine Welsh.'