Latest Fiction

NFTU Photo Stories exhibition

A collaborative experiment in writing, photography and design.

Limited edition prints available here

In 2012, NFTU will be growing the number of typographs in the exhibition and taking it on tour around the country at literary festivals and galleries. You can see all the typographs and read the stories here.

Latest Non-fiction

  • A Play A Week Do us Part by Karis Eleanor Halsall

    Do us Part by Karis Eleanor Halsall

                    Hayley, 25, Driven, bitchy, self centred and manipulative, and yet incredibly attractive, magnetic. Judy, 24: Small. Quirky, humourous, witty, cynical. Any ethnicity. Greg: 25: Somewhat slower than his friends, perhaps a little less intelligent. A sheep, needs a leader, needs instruction. Any ethnicity. Lauren, 23: Very petite girl, almost verging on frail. Kind and likeable. Incredibly naïve and young also. Sweet and thoughtful. Perhaps the victim of bullying herself at one time. Blonde. Andy, 25: Always been popular, always had the luck. Successful, life is an easy ride for him. Not a [...]

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  • Comedy

    Manos TV – How To Turn A One Pound Coin Into 10 One Pound Coins

    Manos Anastasiou is a Cumbrian rapper/TV presenter, so deep undercover I can’t work out whether he’s fictional or not. Manos has created MTV, or a series of videos in which he walks around his town of Whitehaven educating the viewers about the issues that matter most. It’s hilarious stuff: in one episode he reviews a takeaway order; in another he comes over all nostalgic about the demise of Richard O’Brien’s The Crystal Maze. In this clip, Manos tells us how to make money, and unveils his own action figure. Tweet This Post

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  • Optic Nerve Photography Uncategorized Behind the Scene: Mimi Mollica

    Behind the Scene: Mimi Mollica

    This image is part of a series of photographs that were taken along the 34km Dakar-Diamniadio, the internationally funded motorway under construction that links Dakar to the rest of Senegal. For months I had been photographing the highway as it gradually changed its face, as well as the people that every day crossed the surreal landscape. A scenery where people struggle on a changing space, on the edge between an enduring past and a doubtful future. The first thing that struck me about the enormous building site in and around the new motorway was the disorderly overlapping of new buildings, [...]

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  • Columnists Crow The joy of returning

    The joy of returning

      Listen to this. It’s Jim’ll Fix It. On a wet day. It’s not Christmas. It’s not the end of Boogie Nights. But it’s definitely somewhere in-between. It is nostalgic. A yo-yo word. “We Brits love nostalgia,” a telly ad told me. Nostalgia is what brands that think they deserve more appreciation, do.  To draw us into something that isn’t simply new; to tell you they have always been there.  So you can buy yourself Oxo and Hovis and Fairy Liquid, and nod reassuringly to your mother and your children at the same time. An architect told me that the etymology [...]

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  • Alchemy Constructing the future: Q&A with performance artist Stelarc

    Constructing the future: Q&A with performance artist Stelarc

    Most famous for growing a soft prosthetic ear and then grafting it onto his arm, performance artist Stelarc remains at the forefront of science-in-art. He’s in London at the moment for his annual three-month residency at Brunel University and last night I caught up with him at a talk on the ethics of bioart, held at GV Art. Tell us about the relationship between art and science as you see it. It’s a very problematic relationship: we don’t want scientists doing bad art and we don’t want artists doing bad research. On the other hand, new technologies, cognitive sciences, artificial [...]

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  • Theatre In-Your-Face

    In-Your-Face

    Pic: Joseph Loughborough. IN-YOUR-FACE THEATRE By Gemma Rogers Last week I went to see Philip Ridley’s A Pitchfork Disney, a gothic fairy-tale with a psychological twist. I’ve read the play two hundred times but I’ve never seen it brought to life, mainly because in 1991, twenty-one whole years ago when Hampstead Theatre first treated its audiences to the production, I was still in my back garden playing with earwigs. To see a classic is a thrilling event. It’s now being performed to a whole new generation of theatre goers who are getting to experience Philip Ridley’s beautiful and lyrical writing [...]

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  • Art Design Featured Optic Nerve Interview: Rui Tenreiro

    Interview: Rui Tenreiro

    Rui Tenreiro is an illustrator who has been commissioned widely by publications such as Dazed and Confused, The Guardian, and Faber & Faber.  His personal work is concentrated on writing and illustrating his own books. He was born in Mozambique, and now lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Have you always drawn? Can you tell us how about when you started and/or show us an image from your childhood. I started early, according to my parents, drawing specific things. I drew from films almost right from the start. Describe your work environment I share a nice but cramped space with [...]

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  • London Notes Reportage Elephant and Castle

    Elephant and Castle

    Ed Harkness visits Heygate Estate: Today I’m taking Sophie to a merry-go-round. I spotted it yesterday walking home from Elephant and Castle. I’d fallen asleep and missed my stop. The tube was the first warm place I’d been all day and it sent me straight to sleep. I’d woken thirsty and I figured I could walk down Walworth Road and grab some Guinness Punch from Bagel King. Out on the street I hunched into the wind and hurried past the weird propeller building. In a minute I was at the old Heygate Estate. I’d seen it before from the bus, [...]

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