Leila Rasheed

Leila Rasheed is a widely published author of children’s fiction. For over fifteen years, she has taught Creative Writing and mentored individual writers of all ages in a great variety of settings, including on the University of Warwick’s MA in Writing, at Newman University, at Lumb Bank for Arvon, for Writing West Midlands, for Middle Way Mentoring and in schools. Growing up in Libya, where the supply of English-language books was limited, she was an avid reader of anything she could get her hands on. After a degree in English Literature she studied for an MA in Children’s Literature and worked for the National Literacy Trust before deciding to take her writing seriously and moving to Brussels to work in a bookshop and finish a novel for children.  During her MA in Writing at Warwick University she wrote poetry, some of which was included in a chapbook published by Heaventree Press, but her true love is children’s literature and she quickly returned to it.

Her first novel for children, Chips, Beans and Limousines, was published in 2008 by Usborne. It was a Red House Award Read of the Year, translated into multiple languages and followed by two sequels. Since then she has written historical fiction, biographies of Katherine Johnson and Kamala Harris, texts for reading schemes and a publisher-led magical adventure series, The Witch of Turlingham Academy. Her writing has been published by Scholastic, Usborne, Disney Hyperion, Stripes, Atom, OUP, and Scoop magazine. Most recently, her children’s historical fiction set in a realistically diverse Roman Empire, Empire’s End, was shortlisted for the Tower Hamlets Book award. In 2015, in response to the continuing absence of people of colour, their voices and stories, from British children’s literature, she set up a project called Megaphone, to mentor new children’s writers from ethnic minorities and connect them with agents and publishers. Several alumni of the scheme have gone on to be published and prizewinning and Leila has given consultancy to Book Trust, Literature Wales, and other mentoring schemes based on her experience of creating and managing the scheme. Megaphone is currently running for the third time, and was mentioned as an effective scheme in Time for Change: Black and Minority Ethnic Representation in the Children’s Literature Sector, a 2019 Arts Council England report.

Leila was an RLF Fellow at De Montfort University for three years, and also teaches critical writing skills to sixth formers via the RLF Bridge programme. She lives in Birmingham and has recently begun volunteering as the co-ordinator for the Society of Authors’ Midlands’ meet-up group.