Rachel Zadok was born in Tel Aviv in 1972 and raised in Johannesburg. She has a National Diploma in Fine Arts. In 2001, she escaped a career in advertising to become a writer, which she describes as being a little like running away to join the circus without the safety net. In 2005, she was a runner-up in the Richard & Judy How to Get Published Competition and her first novel, Gem Squash Tokoloshe, was published by Pan Macmillan later that year. Gem Squash Tokoloshe went on to be shortlisted for The Whitbread First Novel Award and The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and longlisted for the IMPAC award. In 2011, she launched Short Story Day Africa, an initiative to highlight African short fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Observer, the Jewish Chronicle, the Independent and, the 2012 Caine Prize Anthology. Rachel’s second novel, Sister-Sister (Kwela Books), is due out in South Africa in April 2013.

She lives in Cape Town with her husband and daughter, and occasionally blogs.Read Less