Stella Beake

I’ve been a humanitarian aid worker for more than two decades. I have worked all over the world, in conflicts and disasters, specialising in gender equality and protection issues — gender-based violence, child marriage, girls’ access to education, and women’s economic empowerment, among other things.

My first book, Becoming Mzungu, was a diary-like journey — from a happy place, remembering real-life experiences, the hope and excitement of first becoming an aid worker. A novel drawn from my own experience.

But I have worked in Afghanistan, and the Taliban take-over in 2021 just broke me. All these wonderful Afghan women I had worked with — educated, smart, experienced women — forced to give up their jobs overnight. On top of that, Roe vs Wade, overturned. A shift to the right, everywhere. Increasing misogyny, anger, violence against women and girls. Regression of hard-fought rights. My sorrow turned to anger. Real rage. How do we allow humanity to continue to treat women and girls like this? And from that anger, It’s a (Wo)man’s World was born.

And finally… Refugee. This was the novel I always wanted to write. A story of displacement, of loss, but told from a role-reversal perspective. Is it possible for people to have more compassion if they could imagine, in any possible world, they would be the ones displaced? Homeless. Stateless. Reliant on the good will of others? The rise in anti-immigration rhetoric across the west catalysed the seed of thought I had for this novel, and so, Refugee was born.

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