Helena Mulkerns has been blessed – or cursed – with an interesting life. An arts journalist and performer, she lived and worked in Paris and New York before joining the UN as an aid worker.

It was her ten years with the UN peacekeeping missions that inspired her collection, Ferenji and Other Stories. Ferenji means ‘foreigner’ in old Arabic and Persian. As the name suggests, Mulkerns’ stories centre on the lives of foreign aid workers in various conflict and post-conflict zones.

“The stories are based on my experiences but they are all invented,” she explains. “There isn’t a character that I have delivered that is as the person was. People can get very upset with you if you do that!”