I am so delighted to have won a place on the Escalator scheme run by the Writers’ Centre Norwich.

It means me and my new novel will receive a period of structured mentoring, development opportunities, and talks and workshops as part of a residential retreat. I also get to take part in a final showcase.

My mentor is Guy Saville, best-selling author of The Africa Reich, and I couldn’t be happier.

The press release is here. To save you scrolling down to the Vs, here is what they have to say about me:

Emma Vandore
Emma is from Edinburgh and – after stints in Brussels, Paris and London – now lives in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire. She studied Social Anthropology at Manchester University and has a Masters in Urban Planning from UCL. She was a journalist for 15 years, reporting from over 30 countries in six continents, and now has her own storytelling consultancy Kagisha Ltd. Her non-fiction work ranges from journalism to academic writing and includes Schizophrenie Francaise, a book on French politics and society published in 2007. Yoga is her third novel and the project she is most excited about writing, ever.

Yoga

After finally finding the courage to call time on a doomed marriage, Truly joins a yoga retreat in a remote part of Sri Lanka. The experience is both maddeningly intense and spiritually liberating – until boom! Into camp one morning drives a jeep full of men with Kalashnikovs.