About

Hi, I'm Nina Athenlay 👋

I'd love to write one of those neat bios. You know the sort - the type that captures the very essence of the person in no more than three sentences. Unfortunately, my sprawling passions make that almost impossible to do. Instead, here are five facts about me that you may or may not know:

• I write fiction. Thrillers mostly. Often about outsider characters, charting their own course in a bewildering world. I'm currently working on my second book, a technothriller set in the snack kiosk of a Silicon Valley tech firm.
• I'm an ethical hacker. My passion is red-teaming AIs, which lets me put my mixed bag of creative, language and tech skills to good use. My break of the latest Anthropic cyber safeguards was recently cited in the Fable system card (section 3.3.2).
• I write essays about topics that get under my skin. I'm drawn to stories that live in the grey areas, where how you feel about them changes depending on how you hold them up to the light.
• I have autism and ADHD. I got diagnosed at 38. It explained a lot :)
• I am a qualified animal behaviourist. I specialise in cats. (But my techniques also work on dogs, toddlers, and large language models, as it turns out!)

Want to get in touch?

You can reach me by email at ninaathenlay [at ] proton.me.