Niel Bushnell

Niel Bushnell
File:Niel Bushnell, author.jpg Bushnell in January 2013
Born	(1970-08-13) 13 August 1970 Hartlepool, England
Occupation	Novelist, Animator & Artist
Genre	Fantasy
Notable works	Sorrowline, Timemsith
Notable awards	Northern Promise Award 2011
Website
www.nielbushnell.com

Niel Bushnell (born 13 August 1970) is an English writer and artist from Hartlepool. He is the author of the children's fantasy novels Sorrowline and Timesmith, the first two books in The Timesmith Chronicles series, published in the UK by Andersen Press. He is the co-founder of animation studio Qurios Entertainment.

Life and career

Niel Bushnell was born in Hartlepool, England. Bushnell collaborated with school friend, Gordon Fraser, to create the newspaper comic strip, The Funny Farm, later retitled Farmageddon. The strip ran for 18 months in the Hartlepool Mail. Later Bushnell developed Farmageddon as an animated project.

Animation

Since 1994 Bushnell has worked as an animator. His credits include a variety of roles on feature films including Space Jam, Lost In Space and Felidae.

In 2002 Bushnell and his wife, Diane, established their own animation studio, Qurios Entertainment, in their home town of Hartlepool. As well as producing animation for commercials Qurios has a string of TV credits, including Hyperdrive, Spooks, Tracy Beaker Returns and The Dumping Ground. Qurios later merged with Dene Films, a Newcastle upon Tyne based live action production company where Bushnell was Animation Director until 2013.

In February 2013 it was announced that Bushnell would be Co-Producer of two animated episodes of the Doctor Who story, The Ice Warriors, which was subsequently released on DVD in August 2013.

Writing

Having written all his life Bushnell began work in 2009 on what became his first novel, Sorrowline. Bushnell submitted the first 30 pages of Sorrowline into the 2011 Northern Writers Awards, an annual event organised New Writing North, a development agency for creative writing and creative reading based in the north east of England. Bushnell received a Northern Promise Award and Sorrowline was quickly picked up for publication by Andersen Press in the United Kingdom, Heyne in Germany and by Pensamento-Cultrix in Brazil.

In January 2014 it was announced that Sorrowline was one of twenty nine début novels for children long-listed for the Brandford Boase Award 2014.

In December 2015 Bushnell, along with Michael Chaplin (writer) and Ian McMillan (poet), was appointed to the Board of trustees of New Writing North.

Works

The Timesmith Chronicles

• Sorrowline (2013)
• Timesmith (2014)

Short Stories

• Scissors (2015) Commissioned by the National Literacy Trust

External links

• NielBushnell.com Official site
• Niel Bushnell at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Niel Bushnell at the Internet Movie Database
• Niel Bushnell at Andersen Press
• Niel Bushnell at Amazon.co.uk