Nina Lyon has worked in a Buddhist therapeutic community in Scotland, written contraband essays for cash in Berlin, and helps run the HowTheLightGetsIn philosophy festival near her home in Hay-on-Wye. Her essay ‘Mushroom Season’, inspired by youthful psychedelic misadventures and the mountains behind her home, was published by Random House in 2014 after being chosen as runner-up in the Financial Times/Bodley Head Essay Prize. She is currently completing a PhD about nonsense and metaphysics at Cardiff University.