Nicholas Royle/The Tiger Garden
My name is Nicholas Royle. I write novels (Counterparts, The Director’s Cut, Antwerp etc) and short stories. I wrote a screenplay. It didn’t reach the screen but it paid for the Man City season tickets for a few years. I teach creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. I review fiction for the Independent and do a regular column for Time Out London in which I round up short stories. I edit anthologies – of short stories, mainly.
Some time last century I edited an anthology of writers’ dreams called The Tiger Garden described by critic Harry Ritchie as ‘uniquely pointless and stupid’ and more charitably by Peter Parker in the Independent as ‘oddly beguiling, and beguilingly odd’. The title came from Anna Kavan. When the book was published, the project felt unfinished. I had omitted to include this author or that author. Those who had been featured would continue to dream. I would continue to dream. This is an opportunity to let loose more tigers in the garden – and to do a lot of other stuff besides.
The Tiger Garden 
17 May 2009 at 19:13
Great idea. Like the template too.
23 May 2009 at 19:41
Hey I am really excited! Managed to get two of your novels sent all the way to me here on the Canadian prairies ( an awesome feat – even given that we pretend we are in the comfortable embrace of “civilisation”)!
So, what should I tackle first : Antwerp or Mortality?
25 May 2009 at 09:41
Well, in fact, you’re getting one novel and a collection of short stories. Antwerp is the novel. It was published in 2004. The collection was published two years later, but many of the stories in it were published long before that. If you like the stories there are loads more knocking about, some online, and if you like Antwerp, you might like The Director’s Cut, a novel that preceded it by four years.