We speak to author Diana Anyakwo about her fascinating route into writing, where her inspiration comes from and how she balances writing with everything in life. Plus we hear a reading from her fab YA novel My Life as a Chameleon.

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Diana Anyakwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. She is of mixed Irish and Nigerian heritage. She moved to the UK when she was a teenager and later graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Molecular Biology and a Masters in Bioreactor Systems. She spent three years in Athens, Greece where she taught English and worked as an editor at an educational publisher. Her debut young adult novel My Life as a Chameleon has won the Children’s Africana Book Award 2025 in the US for Best Chapter Book, it was a finalist for the 2024 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards and the Diverse Book Awards and longlisted for the 2024 Jhalak Children’s and YA prize. Her writing has appeared in The Telegraph and Black Ballad magazine. She currently lives and works in Manchester as a freelance writer and editor of English Language teaching materials.

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