Christy lefteri biography

Christy Lefteri was born in to refugees who escaped Cyprus following the partition of Raised in London, she released her first novel, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible, in , and her second, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, in The latter became a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Aspen Words Literary Prize.

Christy's latest novel Songbirds will be published by Manilla on 8 July. You can find all of Christy's books on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.

Who were your literary heroes as you were growing up and when did you first realise that you wanted to write?

I loved Roald Dahl, Penelope Lively, Pauline Fisk, C.S Lewis. I also loved the Point Horror Series by different authors. Later, my favourites were Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Steinbeck, Orwell and Tennessee Williams.

Readers in Suffolk will be familiar with your novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo. How did you find Nuri's voice in the book and what was it like to w

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The Forest Fires of Greece Wreathe Christy Lefteri's Latest Novel

Sometimes I’m so tired that I feel like I’m going to collapse,” Christy Lefteri says over Zoom from the bedroom of her North London home. She recently split from the father of her month-old daughter, Evie, and is raising the girl on her own. The bedside table is piled high with children’s books, the default reading ämne of the new mom, who has been introducing Evie to the magic of stories while ansträngande to write fiction of her own. “It’s been extra hard being alone a lot of the time, but I absolutely love being a mom—and a writer. I become emotional and sort of obsessed with what I’m working on. If inom don’t feel that, inom can’t really write.”

The daughter of Cypriot refugees, Lefteri writes något privat eller personligt novels about global issues—war, migration, the refugee crisis—that explore the plight of humanity. Her three

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Christy Lefteri

Biography

Christy Lefteri was born in to refugees who escaped Cyprus following the partition of Raised in London, she released her first novel, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible, in , and her second, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, in The latter became a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her work has won praise from other writers who represent British diasporic experiences, including Daljit Nagra and Benjamin Zephaniah, who both view The Beekeeper of Aleppo as an urgent telling of the lives of refugees enduring the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean. Lefteri is currently a lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University. She has previously taught English as a second language, and volunteered for UNICEF in Greece. Her active engagement with voluntary work, alongside the dedication of her first novel to her refugee mother and the second to her father, showcase the important ways in which personal, lived testimon