Born in South Africa during the apartheid era, Mala Naidoo worked as a teacher of English literature in South Africa and Australia. She encourages young people to be 'moved' by reading and inspires confidence and compassion through creative expression. From a very young age, Mala was surrounded by books from the English literary canon. She also enjoys biographies, autobiographies and contemporary novels, and believes that a good dose of life experience and fiction has shaped the representation of places, events and characters in her writing.