Erin Pizzey

Like any child from a disasterously dysfunctional family I took refuge in reading. Books became and still are my drug of choice. I always wanted to be a writer in spite of being dyslexic. I wrote my first novel at 24 but put it away. I was born in China and captured by the Japanese we then moved around the middle east and we finally ended up in Iran. From there to England and boarding school and a holiday day home while my parents were abroad. I married and had my first child in Singapore. I came back to England and opened the first refuge in the world for women and children in 1971. There was no literature in those days about domestic violence so I wrote 'SCREAM QUIETLY OR THE NEIGHBOURS WILL HEAR'. I was desperate to write fiction but fact interfered. I wrote my memoir 'INFERNAL CHILD' to answer the question 'Why did you open the refuge?' and then wrote 'PRONE TO VIOLENCE' about the care for my violent mothers. I left England and lived in Santa Fe New Mexico (by then I had my son)and there I wrote my first novel 'THE WATERSHED'. This was a book about mother damaged men. It had stinking reviews but sold hugely and was a book club choice. I then continued to write novels. My fiction is not just about how people behave in relationships but why. It is the WHY that interests me. All my books explore relationships particularly within the family. 'THE SNOW LEOPARD OF SHANGHAI' explores three generations of a family in Shanghai. SWIMMING WITH DOLPHINS' is set on a Caribbean island where I lived for a while. 'FIRST LADY' is the story of the founding by Jewish families in the West of America and is also a three generation saga. I love to write and I love to hear from my readers across the world.