At Somerton: Emeralds & Ashes

Leila Rasheed is a British writer based in Birmingham, UK. She is the author of many children's books, most recently Empire's End (Scholastic, 2020). She grew up in Libya and has lived in Belgium and Italy. She has a passion for history and loves learning about how people lived in the past. As a teenager in England she enjoyed visiting stately homes, which helped inspire Somerton. She also runs a mentoring scheme for England-based children's writers of colour, called Megaphone: www.megaphonewrite.com.