Nathan Filer is a qualified mental health nurse. The Shock of the Fall, his novel about the life of a young man grieving the loss of his brother, has sold over half a million copies in the UK, was a Sunday Times bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It won The Costa Book of the Year, The Betty Trask Prize, The National Book Award for Popular Fiction and The Writers’ Guild Award for Best First Novel.
His book of non-fiction, The Heartland (also published as This Book Will Change Your Mind About Mental Health), was a Sunday Times Book of the Year and was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. The charity, Rethink Mental Illness, named it as one of their ‘Mental Health Books of the Decade’.
He has written for the Guardian, New York Times and HuffPost. His BBC radio 4 documentary, The Mind in the Media, which explored portrayals of mental illness in fiction and journalism was shortlisted for a Mind Media Award. He’s currently a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.