Nicholas Evans is a renowned English author, journalist, screenwriter, and film producer. He was born on July 26, 1950, in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England and attended Bromsgrove School before going to St. Edmund Hall, Oxford to study law. After graduating with first-class honors, he worked for three years at the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Evans began his career in television, producing films about US politics and the Middle-East for a weekly current affairs program called Weekend World. He then moved on to producing arts documentaries about famous writers, painters, and filmmakers, several of which won international awards. During this time, he had the opportunity to travel extensively and get to know the United States well. In 1983, he made a film about the great British director David Lean, who became a friend and mentor, encouraging Evans to switch from fact to fiction.
For the next ten years, Evans wrote and produced a number of films for television and the cinema. In 1993, he met a blacksmith in the far South-West of England who told him about horse whisperers, which inspired him to start work on his first novel, The Horse Whisperer. Published in 1995, the novel became an international bestseller, selling about fifteen million copies worldwide and translated into 36 languages. It was also made into a movie, starring, produced, and directed by Robert Redford. Evans's second and third novels, The Loop and The Smoke Jumper, were also international bestsellers. He lives in London and Devon, England with his wife, singer/songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming.