Writer talks about his Quaker faith
Gregory Norminton has spoken about his faith and his writing
The Quaker author Gregory Norminton, who recently published his first novel for ten years, has spoken out about how his Quakerism influences his writing.
In an interview published in Storgy magazine last month, the forty-one-year-old writer said: ‘Quakers are pacifists, as is well known, but integral to Quaker thinking about violence is the recognition that we are all capable of it. We are also bound up in systemic violence… This is a concern of my fiction generally. I don’t have answers, but Quakerism has helped me to ask some of the right questions.’
Gregory Norminton, who spent two years in the Bamford Quaker Community in the Peak District, named his novel The Devil’s Highway after a Roman Road in north Surrey, where he grew up. In his book the road links three century-spanning narratives and tells the story of what he calls ‘three battles against our self-destructive nature’.
The author, who lives in Sheffield, has written four other novels: The Ship of Fools, Arts and Wonders, Ghost Portrait and Serious Things. The Devil’s Highway is his fifth book and was published in January 2018.
