Elise Chidley

I grew up in Swaziland, southern Africa, on a farm on the brow of a hill, eating vegetables from my mother's garden, drinking spring water, collecting eggs in a basket, running about barefoot in homemade clothes, and generally behaving like a flower child. (This was quite accidental; my parents scoffed at hippies.) With no TV, we were forced to talk to one another quite a lot, and to read a huge number of books. We moved to South Africa when I was ten, and I finished my schooling and undergraduate degree there. I had a severe case of the travel bug, and began applying for overseas scholarships. Edinburgh, Scotland, seemed like a romantic place to do my Master's in literature, but I hadn't realized I'd be so cold there that I'd have to sleep in a woolly hat. I returned to South Africa to take up my first job as staff writer on a national women's magazine. I thought the glamour would make up for the laughable pay, but it didn't, so I tried my luck first as an English lecturer, and then as a public relations manager. I came to America with my Brit husband (then boyfriend) to study at Penn State, where I got my MFA. We liked it so much in the US that we stayed on, and now here I am in Connecticut in a fixer-upper of a house, spotting deer and groundhogs from the window. Oh, and I forgot to mention--I'm finally doing what I said I'd do when I was six years old. I'm writing books.