Nina Allan is a novelist and critic. Her work has previously won the British Science Fiction Award and the Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire, and been shortlisted for the Hugo Award and the Prix Femina Etranger. In 2018 she was named one of the Guardian's Fresh Voices: 50 Writers You Should Read Now. Her most recent novel is A Granite Silence, a creative investigation of a historical murder case. Nina first met Christopher Priest in 2004. The two began living together in 2011, and talked incessantly of writers and writing for the next 13 years. Unsurprisingly, one of the names that cropped up most frequently was that of J.G. Ballard.