Female

31

I was born and lived in Germany until the age of 8. After the Chernobyl disaster which contaminated much of my hometown, my family and I moved to Tenerife, Spain. My parents set up an organic farm in northern Tenerife and built old-Canarian style cottages for rent. I went to boarding school in England at 16 and stayed on, studying languages in Durham (near Scotland) and travelling to Russian to meet the people whose language I'd become so fascinated by. I worked in journalism and book publishing for several years before moving back to the organic farm I grew up at in Tenerife to set up a rural retreat, offering writing, painting and alternative workshops.