Lezanne Clannachan was born in Denmark and moved to England to complete her education. She has also lived in Singapore, Mozambique and Australia. Her first novel, Jellybird, will be published by Orion in 2013 and she is currently working on a second.

Lezanne also writes short stories. Her flash fiction Neighbourhood Watch received an honourable mention and publication in the Fish Anthology 2012. Her short story, Burial, won the New Writer’s Short Story Awards in 2011 and Set in Amber, was published in the Cinnamon Press Anthology, Jericho, in September 2012.

When she is not writing, Lezanne is attempting to be a good mum to her three children, Emily, Carsten and Maia as well as trying to keep three gerbils alive. She is married to Mark and divides her time between West Sussex and Switzerland.

Five-minute memoir

Lezanne Clannachan recalls moving from Denmark to England

(Independent, Saturday 09 March 2013)

On the night I arrived in England from Denmark, I watched the passing countryside from the backseat of the car and found even the trees alien. At fourteen, I was used to being uprooted and deposited in a new space. Plotted on a map of Copenhagen, the many houses and flats I had called home would have looked like enemy bunkers encroaching on the city centre. So when my English-born mother decided to return home, I thought I knew all about moving.

But a new set of walls is infinitely more knowable than a foreign country.

Of the many backdrops to my Danish childhood, my favourite was a black-timbered mansion with turret staircases and a disco in the dungeon. There, I was always the captive princess awaiting rescue. When my father tired of the diplomatic service, we left the great, lost spaces of the old house behind, and moved to a new bungalow that expelled my games outdoors. Teaming up with the neighbourhood children, I executed daring raids on the adventure-playground of the local kindergarden; five minutes of wild play before the teachers chased us out. Princess became tomboy. (read more)