Leila Chalk nee Lejla Bosnjak is a lawyer and a cook. She is the child of two worlds, having been born in Australia, she grew up in Bosnia from 1986 till mid 1994. Her family, including our Chef, moved as refugees, mostly in camps, for the entirety of the war; Bosanksa Gradiska, Banja Luka, Zagreb, Novi Travnik, Travnik, Bugojno. In 1994, Leila and her immediate family escaped the war and lived in a detention camp in Varazdin, Croatia, for fifteen months. A further two years of international post refugee re-settlement dramas in Australia and Bosnia, before they finally settled in Melbourne, Australia, in late 1997. There, Leila studied, loved, laughed, cooked, and finally, wrote.