Biography

I was born and grew up in India and came to the UK with my English mother as a teenager. As a result of growing up abroad  and my mixed Indian-British heritage, I have an outsider’s perspective into both cultures. Being an outsider is a useful gift for a writer, and, for different reasons, most writers do feel like outsiders. Writing is about ways of seeing, and every writer needs to find their own angle on it. The search for belonging has motivated much of my own writing.

Teaching and Mentoring

I have an MA in Creative Writing with distinction. I taught on the Certificate in Creative Writing at Sussex University for ten years, was a Lecturer in Creative Writing on the MA at Brighton University, and taught on the Creative Writing Programme in Brighton. I am a member of Writers Mosaic, a branch of the Royal Literary Fund, and am currently a Reading Round Lector for the RLF. I am a mentor and board member of Writing Our Legacy, an arts and heritage organisation enabling Black, Asian and ethnically diverse people to tell their story through writing and the creative arts. I am also a volunteer mentor for We Are Not Numbers, working with writers from Gaza to tell their stories. I have run my own weekly writing class in East Sussex for 24 years, and I also offer a mentoring service for writers (see my Writing Clinic page).

I co-founded and co-ran the GuestHouse Storytellers, a community performance storytelling club in Sussex, for 16 years from 2007 to 2023.