Leila Aboulela was born in 1964, grew up in Khartoum and moved to the UK in her twenties to study at the London School of Economics. In 1992, while living in Aberdeen with two young children and a husband working offshore, Leila found comfort through writing about her home city. She attended creative-writing workshops which helped to broaden her reading and introduced her to Scottish writers. Her last novel Minaret, published by Bloomsbury, was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Leila Aboulela now lives in Abu Dhabi and is currently working on her third novel.