biography (jeff's version)

Jeff Noon

I was born in 1957, in a place called Droylsden, a little town some eight miles outside of Manchester. Definitely not the sort of place to grow up artistic, unless a) you don't mind getting beaten up and b) you've got serious plans of escape. I suppose I lead a classic childhood, in the sense that I retreated into myself, built my own inner world, threw away the key. I was always messing about with paint and beat-up old tape recorders, making things out of rubbish, making entire worlds out of next to nothing! I had this talent for painting, and I was lucky enough to be encouraged at it. I was introduced to the work of Picasso at a ridiculously early age.

I don't think I actually came back out of this inner kingdom till well past puberty, when I first started to realise I might have something that other people would enjoy. I started to write, get into bands, hang out with the few other lonely souls on the edge. I joined a group of people called Stand and Deliver who would go round pubs in the area, putting on little shows(music, comedy, poetry etc. This is when I first got hold of the mad idea of actually being serious about writing.

I studied Painting and Drama at Manchester University, but only after a number of years of just bumming around, working at various things, getting involved with the Fringe Theatre scene in Manchester, trying to find a way to break through. A few months after leaving college I came up with the idea for a play about the Falklands, which I called Woundings. I heard that the Royal Exchange Theatre were holding a playwriting competition sponsored by Mobil, so I bashed out a first draft, sent it in.

I remember it was my birthday (this would be my 28th birthday) when the man from the theatre came round to tell me I'd won! The Royal Exchange put the play on and even made me their writer in residence. So that was it, I thought I was a playwright. Only to find myself struggling for the next few years, desperately trying to come up with a second play that somebody, anybody! would perform.It never happened, and I started to despair, and to think that I wasn't a writer after all.

With no money and no prospects, I took a job at Waterstone's Bookshop in Manchester. This was meant to be a stopgap until I got myself back on track. As so often is the case, I ended up working there for five years. Five years of being surrounded by books! The funny thing is, I never really thought that much about writing one myself. Until one day, when the Assistant Manager (who was starting his own publishing company) came up to me on the shopfloor, and asked me to have a go at writing a novel. So I went home that night, turned on the beat-up word processor and starting writing: "Mandy came out of the all-night Vurt-U-Want, clutching a bag of goodies." And the company became Ringpull Press, and the book became Vurt, and the next thing I know it had won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I guess all those years of living inside my own head finally paid off.

Read the press release version of Jeff's biography