I’m a British author who lives in County Monaghan, Ireland. When it gets too dark and cold, my husband and I scuttle off to our house in the hills near Girona, Spain. Born to a Bosnian mother and a Cornish father, I grew up mostly in London, spending childhood summers in my mother's hometown of Sarajevo.

I wrote my debut novel BLACK BUTTERFLIES (2022) to understand the siege that devastated Sarajevo from 1992-1996. It turned many of my maternal relatives, including my grandparents, into refugees. It's inspired by their stories and, in particular, by the extraordinary tale of my great-uncle, the Bosnian landscape painter Dobrivoje Beljkasic.

BLACK BUTTERFLIES was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and the Nota Bene Prize. It was chosen as Indie Fiction Book of the Month in May 2022.

I love teaching as well as writing and teach creative writing, most recently at University College Dublin. I have a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and read Spanish, Italian and Social Anthropology at Cambridge University.