Nell Leyshon is a British playwright and novelist born in Glastonbury, Somerset. At the age of eleven, she moved to a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels. Her first attempts at novels were with a baby on her lap. She burned a lot of the early writing, and finally started on Black Dirt, which was her first published novel.

While struggling to write prose, she got a commission from BBC Radio 4 to write a radio drama, "Milk", which won the Richard Imison Award for best first radio play. Her second play, The Farm, was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award.

Her novel, Black Dirt was published in 2005 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize.

Her third novel, The Colour of Milk, was published in May 2012 and has won the Prix de l’Union Interalliee and was nominated for the Prix Femina in France and was was voted the book of the year in Spain. Her most recent novel, "Memoirs of a Dipper" was published in 2015.