Nell Frizzell

Author / Journalist

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Assistant: Olivia Davies

Books

Nell Frizzell has written for The Guardian, VICE, The Telegraph, Elle, Grazia, The Pool, The Observer, Buzzfeed, Refinery29, Red, Time Out and is a Vogue columnist. She is best known for features and columns on gender, culture, art and politics, including a recent Guardian piece on childbirth that was shared over 10,000 times, a dispatch from The Jungle refugee camp in Calais for VICE, advice on breastfeeding in public and many, many pieces on wild swimming. Nell has also featured several times on BBC Radio4’s Woman’s Hour, Shortcuts and as a guest on Radio 5 Live, BBC London and (surprisingly often) on BBC Radio Ulster. As well as journalism, Nell has written and performed comedy (at Green Man and Machynlleth Comedy Festival as well as various comedy nights in London), works as a lifeguard at the Ladies Pond on Hampstead Heath, is a seamstress and occasionally recreates famous portraits in her front room for her blog http://goppeldangers.tumblr.com/.  

Current publication:

CUCKOO: The new novel about family and motherhood from the author of The Panic Years (Transworld) - 29th August 2024

After Nancy's father dies, she is faced with two life-changing revelations.

One: She has a half-brother she knew nothing about.

Two: She's expecting a baby.

Her brother is clearly the result of an affair, and she's having the baby with a man who, despite being in a relationship with Nancy for over two years, shows absolutely no signs of commitment. He's not even in the same country as her right now.

Nancy's half-sister Rita is furious with their father and wants nothing to do with their new-found brother. But Nancy is intrigued... In a tumult of grief, bewilderment, fear and hope, she is eager to meet Oliver and find the answer to what really makes a family.

And in a few months' time, who is going to step up and help her bring up a baby?

Praise:

‘carefully observed’, ‘poignant’, ‘examines what connects us to other people’ - Financial Times

Praise for previous publications:

HOLDING THE BABY (Transworld) - 2nd March 2023

‘It makes excellent, radical sense’  - The Times
 
'It's exhilarating, infuriating, urgent and human - a really excellent journalistic investigation of our collective failure to value and support the next generation and the people who are raising them, and what needs to change.' - Daisy Buchanan 
 
'Holding the Baby is the sanest, most gorgeous thing on capitalism’s poisonous effect on parenthood I’ve ever read. I was hooting and hollering by the manifesto at the end. Because it’s Nell Frizzell it’s funny and brisk and also because it’s Nell Frizzell it’s urgent and incisive. It opens your eyes to a vastly healthier and utterly beautiful way to support babies (and people who used to be babies.) I’m grateful for this book.' - Rob Delaney 
 
'My favourite person on the politics of parenthood'  - Pandora Sykes

'A blazing, brilliant read ... compassionate, convincing, funny!'  - Amy Liptrot

 
"Holding the Baby had me laughing from literally before the first page i.e., the contents, and it didn't stop. As a newish parent, I feel seen as Nell explains what the hell we've just been through with such great, honest writing - warts, nappy rash and all. It made me feel anger, joy and a whole lot smarter. I felt like I was holding the baby along with her." - Matt Winning
 
“I love Nell Frizzell’s writing and I love her spirit. She writes with real conviction and energy, and I am always interested in what she has to say. I devoured Holding the Baby, especially the way it combined the colour of a memoir with the intent of a manifesto. Nell has such an original, forceful and also, crucially, very funny take on parenthood in general and motherhood specifically. This is a timely and important book." - Clover Stroud
 

SQUARE ONE (Transworld) - 7th July 2021

‘A smart and witty portrait of modern female relationships’ - the Metro

'Keenly observed and hecking funny, this is a story for our times' - Red Magazine 

'Witty and charming, I couldn't put it down' - Closer Magazine

'Square One is electrifyingly good - Nell takes a story that so many of us are familiar with, from art and life, and tells it in a dazzling, wholly original way. Sharply comic and perfectly poignant, this is an unconventional love story with real resonance. Written with such verve and clarity, I can't believe this is her first novel. I'm already desperate for the next one.' - Daisy Buchanan

‘A fresh, funny novel filled with truths about relationships and perfect details. I tore though it.’ - Amy Liptrot

'Electrifyingly good...sharply comic and perfectly poignantDaisy Buchanan, author of Insatiable

'Timely, honest, brave and funny calling for a new kind of conversation about love, work, and parentood' - the Daily Mail 

'A funny and charming novel full of fresh observations, tenderness and hope.' - Katy Wix

 

THE PANIC YEARS - (Transworld, UK and Flatiron, US) - 11th February 2021

‘Frizzell writes beautifully and petically … while reassuring and validating the reader’s concerns with hilarious and comforting anecdotes from her own panic years. This is an important read for all women’ - the Independent 

'Nell Frizzell’s thoughts on womanhood and motherhood are as informative as they are poetic. Writing that challenges and enlightens you just as much as it entertains and stimulates you is rare, this book confidently does both on an important and complicated topic for modern women' - Dolly Alderton

'Searingly honest, witty and moving. For anyone who knows what it's like to simultaneously want to weep with joy and throw your child out of the window, Frizzell is a very welcome voice in the conversation on motherhood'. - Vogue

‘This book is incredible relatable and comforting... ‘Frizzell writes beautifully and poetically … making this an important read for all women’  - the Press Association

'Her silly delight in the playful possibilites of the English language is what makes her such an engaging and endearing narrator' - the Telegraph 

'There is so much about womanhood that feels indefinable. And yet with her definitions of the flux, and the panic years, Nell manages to define the indefinable - as well as uniting childfree women and mothers, where the two are so often pitted against one another. Lyrical, moving and thorough, this is a memoir, a feminist text and a piece of social commentary. Every millennial woman should have it on her bookshelf'. - Pandora Sykes

'Heartening, eye-opening, hilarious. I'm glad Nell has given this weird time a term we can all use'. - Emma Gannon

'A wonderful, candid memoir about the personal and political implications of motherhood, full of humour and fizzing prose. I loved it'. - Luiza Sauma, author of Flesh and Bone and Everything You Ever Wanted

'Lively, informative… Nell uses her own experience generously and the effect is inclusive, reassuring and funny, She articulates feelings I’ve had but never quite explored – it’s excellent' - Amy Liptrot

'The Panic Years made me laugh and it made me cry. There’s a rare tenderness to this book that comes from not having felt seen before. It’s for our generation, and Nell gets it. She understands and respects us'. - Rhiannon Cosslett

'For someone older, in a different set of panic years altogether, part of the pleasure of this book lies in reminiscence, reflecting and reframing. But it’s also galvanising, engaging and enraging. The personal is political, philosophical, emotional, and very funny. I resisted the urge to highlight everything that made me laugh, or think, or fired me up, because the whole thing would have been one big neon block' - Jenny Landreth

'Breathtakingly good' - Lauren Bravo

'Informs, educates, entertains... This book will resonate with so many readers'. - Red's top picks of 2020

'Brilliant' - Grazia

'Frizzell’s compassionate, compulsive prose fizzes with imaginative humour and metaphor... I admire Frizzell’s bravery, candour and campaigning spirit. Her critique of a society where inadequate, outdated government policy and workplace culture perpetuate gender inequality is sure to spark crucial conversations.- the Evening Standard

'A must-read... sharp, funny, it chronicles all of the big decisions a woman is expected to make between the ages of 25-40: where to live, if they should marry, what to do with one's career. And that other biggie: to have a baby or not'. - Culture Whisper

'Read everything that Nell writes! We continuously mention her work on the High Low because she really is such a unique writer/ - The High Low Podcast

'Nell Frizzell is a master. In The Panic Years, she picks you up and drops you deep inside herself and makes you see what she sees and feel what she feels in a manner that is both jarring and beautiful. I particularly recommend this book to men as it will start to heal the rift between the sexes that capitalism has – if not created – nourished and exploited. This book is a visceral exploration of one young woman’s life that has immediately applicable lessons for us all. Vital reading. Lest my trumpeting make you worry it’s only “important,” The Panic Years is also fun, funny, and warm. I love it dearly!' - Rob Delaney, writer and star of Catastrophe

'Wonderful... touching, helpful and enlightening'. - Sara Pascoe

Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2021

Transworld

Everyone is moving on... and then, there's Hanna. By thirty, Hanna expected to have it all (or at least some of it)

· A fulfilling and successful career
· A healthy, long-term relationship, maybe even an engagement ring
· A house (or at least a flat) of her own

But in reality, she's back at square one...

· Single after breaking up with someone she's not sure ever loved her
· Flooded with wedding invitations and pregnancy scan pictures from friends
· Unable to afford to live on her own and forced to move in with her father who is also single and dating

Everyone moves at different paces, but Hanna's life is in reverse. With the pressure to keep up and her dad's insufferable musings on Tinder, will she be able to figure out what she really wants?

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2019

Daunt Books

Tucked away along a shady path towards the north-east edge of Hampstead Heath is a sign: Women Only. This is the Kenwood Ladies’ Bathing Pond.

Floating in the Pond’s silky waters, hidden by a canopy of trees, it’s easy to forget that you are in the middle of London. On a hot day, thousands of swimmers from eight to eighty-plus can be found waiting to take a dip before sunbathing in the adjoining meadow. As summer turns to autumn and then winter, the Pond is still visited by a large number of hardy regulars in high-vis hats, many of whom have been swimming here for decades.

In these essays we see the Pond from the perspectives of writers who have swum there. Esther Freud describes the life-affirming sensation of swimming through the seasons; Lou Stoppard pays tribute to the winter swimmers who break the ice; Margaret Drabble reflects on the golden Hampstead days of her youth; Sharlene Teo visits for the first time; and Nell Frizzell shares the view from her yellow lifeguard’s canoe.

Combining personal reminiscence with reflections on the history of the place over the years and through the changing seasons,At the Pond captures fourteen contemporary writers’ impressions of this unique place.

2021

Transworld

The Panic Years: something between adolescence and menopause, a personal crisis, a transformation.

The panic years can hit at any time but they are most commonly triggered somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and forty. During this time, every decision a woman makes - from postcode to partner, friends to family, work to weekends - will be impacted by the urgency of the one decision with a deadline, the one decision that is impossible to take back: whether or not to have a baby.

But how to stay sane in such a maddening time?
How to understand who you are and what you might want from life?
How to know if you're making the right decisions?

Raw, hilarious and beguilingly honest, Nell Frizzell's account of her panic years is both an arm around the shoulder and a campaign to start a conversation. This affects us all - women, men, mothers, children, partners, friends, colleagues - so it's time we started talking about it with a little more candour.

2023

Transworld

It's time to share the motherload.

A memoir culminating in a manifesto, Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore:

- What effect does parenting have on your career?

- How can we make childcare affordable and fit for purpose?

- If parenting is so hard, why does anyone ever do it more than once?

Funny, reassuring and radically ambitious, Holding the Baby sheds light on the ways in which we fail new parents, and offers a rallying crying that we fight for a better alternative.