Writing: My body of creative work is largely LGBTQ focused, and weaves together a fresh contemporary style with magical realism; black comedy with a romantic twist. I deem myself a representative of the weird and the queer. I have been a creative type since my youth, forever dreaming up stories and even winning the Unicorn Arts Theatre National Young Playwright Competition for ages 9-12 as a child. As a teenager, I travelled to America two summers in a row to write, direct, and act in a production called Trajectories at a school in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Since then, I have graduated with an MA in Creative Writing, an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes, and have performed across the UK as an entertainer and spoken word artist.
Drag: Ridiculous, rancid and beautiful, Nana Arthole appeared fully formed under a stack of mouldy Women’s Weekly’s in 2013. Starting out as a DJ and host in the Nottingham club-scene, Nana quickly took to the stage to give her theatre background a long overdue birthday, soon becoming known for a quick wit that blends both the dark and the adorable. A fully qualified, self-certified entertainer, if you name it, she’s convinced she can do it! Her wicked charm and flexible skill-set has given her the opportunity to work alongside some of the biggest names in the drag world, as well as appear on big telly more than once. The ladder in her tights is the Stennah Stairlift to purgatory – so why don’t you join this endlessly talented and delusional queen on her ride towards the lowest hanging star!
Current
Unnamed Drag Productions
(Podcast & Events / Co-host & Producer)
Gladrags Clubnight
(Host, Entertainer & Producer)
G4YB0Y band
(Production & Vocals)
Libra Season Films
(Writer, Co-Director & Co-Producer)
Previous
Rainbow Down
(Solo music project)
Thom Bowla
(Solo music project)
Nottingham Writers’ Studio
(Development & Operations Manager, 2019 – 2023)
DirtyFilthySexy LGBTQ+ Clubnight
(Co-host, Resident Performer & Event Producer, 2013 – 2021)
Headway Rehabilitation Centre
(Creative Writing Tutor, Nov 2020 – March 2021)
Awards & Qualifications
1996 Winner of the Unicorn Arts Theatre National Young Playwright Competition (Empty Spaces)
Highly Commended in 1997 (Parodyse High)
BA English w/Creative Writing
(NTU)
MA Creative Writing
(NTU)
MSc Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes
(Metanoia Institute/Middlesex Uni)
Projects & Commissions
Write Minds
(Volunteer Shadow Facilitator)
Drag Me Up
(Lead Artist – collaboration with Big White Shed)
Write Pride LGBTQ Writing Festival
(Assistant Producer & Workshop Facilitator)
If the Trees Could Talk
(Lead Artist – with Derbyshire LGBT+ & People Express)
Stories from The Back of the Cupboard
(Lead Artist – Crowdfunded web series)
Writing From Home
(Workshop Facilitator – with Write Mindful)
Reconnecting Your LGBTQ+ Community
(Workshop Facilitator – with Writing East Midlands)
Produce & Progress
(Lead Artist & Workshop Facilitator – with Pedestrian & Leicester LGBT+ Centre)
Being There
(Workshop Facilitator – with People Express)
Overseal Gala 60th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet
(Lead Artist – with People Express)
Meaningless
(Six-part sitcom written with James Faulkner – currently seeking development)
‘A Good Beating‘ Podcast
(Co-host & Audio Production)
MXTRXSS
(ACE DYCP funded solo show – currently in development)
‘I FORGIVE YOU’
(Short LGBTQ Film by Libra Season Films)
Publications
The Smart Mouthed Victim
(Self-published)
Death is Awful for the Living
(Self-published)
“The Athame”
in Love, Identity, Desire Anthology (Global Wordsmiths)
If the Trees Could Talk
(People Express & Dizzy Ink)
Choose Your Own Mediocre
Available as Paperback & Kindle
(Big White Shed)
“Ashtray”
in Reflections Digital Zine (Editor & Contributor – Nottingham Writers’ Studio)
To Resist A Nation Going Backwards
in Shuddhashar magazine (Issue #25)
You can’t spell ‘Transform’ without backwards ‘Art’
in Radical Roots magazine (Issue #3)
“Campaign (Ode to the Activist)”
in Notes on Alone (Editor & Contributor – Writing East Midlands)
Seeking Publication
K is For; (Novel)
Men Holding Hands (Poetry Novella)
Works in Progress
If God Were On Our Side (Novella)
The Jigsaw Garden (Novel)
Reviews & Testimonials
‘Passionate, forthright, tender, baffled, dangerous, hopeful, funny, [his writings] quest for answers but refuse to accept trite hand-me-downs. Their interweavings challenge notions of artifice and tired versions of the mundane. In a variety of forms and voices, they embrace the sublime and the rotten, the detritus of life and moments of exhilaration, witty humour and harsh loss. With agility, varied rhythms, swooping descents, rising uplifts, they conjure the speaking voice, the word reaching to be set free, protesting against captivity, while honouring the ordinary, the profane, the messy, the incomplete, and the absurd. The question of how to write and live fully in the face of loss, oppression, prejudice and mistrust is explored with humour and poignance.‘
Fiona Hamilton – Writer & MSc CWTP Tutor, Metanoia Institute
‘Thom is a very engaging and inspiring workshop leader. During his time working with Write Minds he connected well with the needs of the participants and brought a strong knowledge of writing forms to the project. He ignites a passion for change using literature and does this through innovative writing techniques and challenges.‘
Hayley Green – Founder, Write Minds & Producer, Write Pride LGBTQ+ Writing Festival
‘Thom Seddon was a student of the Nottingham Trent University MA in Creative Writing. As Module Leader of the Fiction module on that course it was my responsibility to supervise and grade his work and facilitate critical workshops in which he took part. The course is largely devoted to producing and studying creative writing but it also includes a substantial academic and critical element. Thom proved to be a very innovative writer. He has a fine mind, and an approach to creative writing that seeks to incorporate diverse traditions of storytelling and literature. The results of this exploration are refreshing in that he has always been able – and continues to be able – to produce something original.‘
Dr Graham Joyce – Reader in Creative Writing 1996-2014, Nottingham Trent University
‘Yesterday, I finished reading Thom Seddon’s “Choose Your Own Mediocre” (2020), a collection of monologues in verse and prose. I call them, rather loosely, monologues because they are conveyed on the page in a consistent, unifying voice, wryly self-deprecating, sometimes angry, sometimes horny, often seriously puzzled by the conditions of mortality. Towards the end, in a piece located on the Norfolk coast, Seddon says: “The beach is a weathered mess, but I guess I was never much into perfection. / I think I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.” There’s an endearing warmth and modesty about this acceptance of imperfection, of “weathered mess”, in himself as much as in what he observes, that characterises the dominant tone of the whole book (if dominant isn’t too pushy a term). The muddled mediocrity of ordinary life—over which Seddon both laughs and cries—is enough. It has a value, and validity, of its own.‘
Gregory Woods – former professor at NTU and poet published with Carcanet