Siya’s passion for writing and storytelling began early on in childhood when she read and imagined stories for her siblings. From a family of poets and storytellers, she was born in Karachi and came to the UK as a two-year old with her parents. She was brought up in Manchester and moved to London to study Biochemical Engineering, followed by Sanskrit at the University of Bonn, where she also taught English as a foreign language. A passion for understanding how the mind works led to a part-time degree in psychology back in London, all the while writing poems and short stories.
After a long, winding path as a student, teacher and art therapist, she started her first novel, The Last Beekeeper, at the age of 40, when the idea for the book was born in a writing class that was a gift to herself after finishing her Masters in Art Therapy.
She loves escaping into stories and being in the natural world and is currently writing her second novel set in fifteenth-century Spain.
