ABOUT ATINUKE
I was born in Nigeria to a Nigerian university lecturer father and an English editor mother.
For the first years of my life we lived in a dusty provincial town near my grandmother and grandfather, my uncles and my aunts, and the big boy cousins that I adore. Then my father was offered a government job and we moved to the enormous chaotic city of Lagos, where, despite the arrival of my two sisters, I was often lonely and bored.
When I was ten I was sent to boarding school in England. This was something I wanted very much (due to reading far too much Enid Blyton). It did cure me of my loneliness and boredom but I suffered terribly from homesickness.
Luckily it was only three years before my parents moved to England with my sisters and brand new baby brother and I was able to leave boarding school and embark on a new adventure with my siblings at the local comprehensive school.
I was born in Nigeria to a Nigerian university lecturer father and an English editor mother.
For the first years of my life we lived in a dusty provincial town near my grandmother and grandfather, my uncles and my aunts, and the big boy cousins that I adore. Then my father was offered a government job and we moved to the enormous chaotic city of Lagos, where, despite the arrival of my two sisters, I was often lonely and bored.
When I was ten I was sent to boarding school in England. This was something I wanted very much (due to reading far too much Enid Blyton). It did cure me of my loneliness and boredom but I suffered terribly from homesickness.
Luckily it was only three years before my parents moved to England with my sisters and brand new baby brother and I was able to leave boarding school and embark on a new adventure with my siblings at the local comprehensive school.
My father went back to Nigeria after only a year, drawn by a new government post and his own homesickness. We joined him in the school holidays but, for us, home became England. And, after a gap year in Paris, I went to the University of York in the north of England to study English, French and Commonwealth Literatures.
After university I went back to France and fell in love with living on the land, but it was in England that I told my first story on stage, spontaneously at a festival, when the booked performer did not turn up. I absolutely loved it, the audience absolutely loved it!
For the next few years I fell head over heels into storytelling. I started collecting stories and performing them all over the world, focussing on stories from Africa and the African diaspora.
In 2005 an illness stopped me from travelling long enough to write the first "Anna Hibiscus" stories.
After university I went back to France and fell in love with living on the land, but it was in England that I told my first story on stage, spontaneously at a festival, when the booked performer did not turn up. I absolutely loved it, the audience absolutely loved it!
For the next few years I fell head over heels into storytelling. I started collecting stories and performing them all over the world, focussing on stories from Africa and the African diaspora.
In 2005 an illness stopped me from travelling long enough to write the first "Anna Hibiscus" stories.
I had been meaning to write those stories for years - ever since the homesickness of my boarding school days when I discovered how little children in the UK knew about Africa and even more so as a story teller when it was clear from children's questions how little they still knew about the Africa that I am from.
"Anna Hibiscus" was quickly followed by "The No.1 Car Spotter" which I wrote for (and with) my own sons.
Because among all the stories and the traveling and the books, I have acquired a husband, had two sons, and moved to Wales (not in that order).
Because among all the stories and the traveling and the books, I have acquired a husband, had two sons, and moved to Wales (not in that order).
We live in a tiny cabin on a rocky, boggy mountainside overlooking the sea. I am still collecting and telling stories but now in the most excellent of company. I write book after book at a table in our kitchen-living room (or in my car when the noise drives me crazy) and the boys patiently listen to draft after draft.
Often the rain stops and the sun comes out and the sea and sky are blue and I am as near to paradise as I have ever hoped to be.
