Jon Lawrence (left) is a writer from South Wales now living in the east of England who is the author of the acclaimed novel The Pastoral. He has written a novella, a number of plays, two collections of poetry and comic essays and this year saw his follow-up novel Playing Beneath the Havelock House. Now he offers his second novella, Bisha.

"Writer's block is the best thing that ever happened to me. Following the release of an album called The Girl in the Spotlight I had nothing to say as a songwriter. It was 2009 and for the last ten years I had been writing constantly. Suddenly it all halted. The title track of the album gave me the curiosity to find out more about the characters I had written about in my songs. There is only so much depth you can go into in a lyric and I wanted to get to know these characters a little more. This led me to writing a play, which led on to poetry, which in turn led to writing essays, short stories and a novel.

My writing has been informed by many of the subjects which my songs explored - my difficult relationship with my father, my depression, my sense of the comically absurd, the anger I feel toward organised religion, the love of my family and the death of my friend in the 9/11 attacks in New York - and now as a playwright and novelist I have been able to delve a little deeper into these issues."

Jon is also a music education specialist and ethnomusicologist.