Sheena Kalayil

Sheena Kalayil’s third novel The Wild Wind (Polygon) is based on her nomadic childhood, spent shuttling between India, Zambia and Zimbabwe, where her parents were teachers. Her first novel, The Bureau of Second Chances (Polygon), won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best First Novel and was shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Prize for Fiction with a Sense of Place. Her fourth novel, The Others (Fly On The Wall), explores migration and belonging through a love triangle set in the last days of the DDR – a work that was inspired by her time spent as a student in Budapest in 1989. She has worked as a teacher all over the world, including in Nepal, Mozambique, Tunisia and Venezuela. Since 2002 she has lived in the UK, and now teaches at the University of Manchester.

Photo by S Benjamin.