Born in 1962, Nina Stibbe grew up in rural
Leicestershire, England, in a single-parent family. In 1982, she left Leicestershire to work as the nanny in the household of
Mary-Kay Wilmers for two years, at 55
Gloucester Crescent, London, looking after Mary-Kay's two children with
Stephen Frears, Sam and Will. At the time Gloucester Crescent was the home of a number of notable artistic and literary figures, including
Alan Bennett,
Jonathan Miller,
Claire Tomalin,
Karel Reisz,
Deborah Moggach and
Michael Frayn. This literary environment was completely new to her. During this time, Nina wrote letters to her sister Victoria, back in Leicestershire, detailing her experiences as a nanny amongst the literary elite. After leaving the Wilmers household, Stibbe studied Humanities at
Thames Polytechnic. In 1990 she started work as a marketing assistant at
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, then as a rep for the
Open University Press, and finally for
Routledge, becoming a commissioning editor. In 2002 she moved to
Cornwall with her partner, Mark Nunney, whom she met while living on Gloucester Crescent, and their children.
Reasons to Be Cheerful won the 2019
Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, making Stibbe the fourth woman to win the prize.
Man at the Helm had been shortlisted in 2015 and
Paradise Lodge had been on the 2017 shortlist. Two rare breed pigs were named Reasons and Cheerful after the novel's title. In 2020, Stibbe was awarded the
Comedy Women in Print Prize for
Reasons to Be Cheerful, winning £3,000. == Awards ==