I'm a 56 year old violinist and string teacher, the daughter of a german-jewish holocaust refugee. I grew up in St Andrews, Scotland, where my Dad was a history lecturer in the university. Thereafter, I studied and lived in Sheffield until 2000. For the past 23 years I've been a resident of Düsseldorf, Germany, together with my husband and two grown-up children.
My passion, apart from music, has always been my family's tragic but fascinating wartime history, particularly the way my Dad's Aunt and Uncle's lives were taken in Concentration Camps. Over the years I've been able to piece together their story, exploring collections in Germany's national, state and town archives. The events and personalities I've encountered in the files there are so unexpected and vividly described by the eyewitnesses who experienced them, that I've been inspired to make them into a historical novel.
For the past 4 years I've been spending all my spare time learning how to do this. I've done 3 short courses with CBC, and 2 years ago was chosen for their selective 6-month novel writing course which I completed in summer 2022. Recently, I took another online creative writing course with Jericho Writers. I would very much like one-to-one professional help now and am therefore applying for one of your writing mentor awards.
