Photo by my talented husband
My family is Zimbabwean and I grew up there (although I managed to be born in England through a strange combination of circumstances). I loved Zimbabwe, even as it started to crumble around us, but I was lucky enough to be able to move to New Zealand with my family when I was seventeen, and was very happy there too. I used to watch the Gilmore Girls in Zimbabwe and dream of living somewhere where there were 'proper' seasons and I could wear coats and scarves. So, as much as I complained about the cold, I did like having the variety. I got married to my long-term Kiwi boyfriend in 2007. We moved to Austin, Texas in 2010 (hooray, warm weather once more!) and we live very happily here with our cat, Mink and the occasional persistent group of ants in the pantry.
I have wanted to be a writer since I knew what a story was, and I have been working towards it all my life. I wrote my first 'proper' book when I was fifteen, and it was published by Texpertise Ltd in Zimbabwe. It was a fantasy novel for ages 9 to 12, and boasted the dreadful title of The Adventures of Cat, Emma and Duncan in the Lost Land, but sadly (thankfully) isn't available outside of Zimbabwe. I'm proud of it, but my writing has certainly changed dramatically since I was in my mid-teens! Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-three I wrote about six novels that live in desk drawers and are never going to see the light of day (and probably never should!). So believe me, it takes time to produce anything halfway good.
Anyway, I completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English and Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Canterbury a few years ago, while working part-time as a book buyer, then got a job as an editor at a publishing company. I quit at the end of 2006 to do the Post-graduate Diploma in Book Publishing at Whitireia Arts College (and went back to the bookstore part-time), and then went on to do the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Canterbury. My Masters project was a novel based on my experiences growing up in post-Independence Zimbabwe. That novel became, after many rewrites and revisions, The Cry of the Go Away Bird, which will be published by Harvill Secker (an imprint of Random House UK) on 10 February 2011 and in a Dutch edition by Orlando later in the year. I am represented by the wonderful Vivien Green of Sheil Land Associates.
I am currently working on another novel set in Zimbabwe, and a Young Adult novel set in New Zealand.
Thanks for visiting!
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