Hazel Manuel is a UK born novelist whose writing follows a career in education, first as a teacher/lecturer and after as a business leader within the education sector. Having married a French man she met in India, Hazel now lives and writes in Paris. Hazel's route into writing was an unusual one, which draws not only on her experience as a teacher of Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology, but also on her time as CEO and MD of two successful education companies. As such, her history is one which brings to her writing an unusual breadth and richness. Having moved from the corporate world into full-time writing, Hazel is well able to explore and express those deeper aspects of what it means to be living and striving in our modern world. Through themes of uncertainty, loss, obsession, power, change and fear, and of questioning life and the self, the reader travels with her characters through an archetypical inner journey that is fundamentally satisfying because it could equally be their own. 'It is important to me to explore the issues and questions that modern life raises,' Hazel says. 'Questions of identity, equality, the ideas and assumptions that inform the ways we live our lives underpin my stories and the characters that live them.' Since becoming a full-time writer, Hazel's books have received international attention. She has given talks and taken part in literary panel discussions, including at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival in India, the London Welsh Literature Festival and Zestfest UK. She has given interviews about her work on BBC Radio Wales, World Radio Paris and Expat-Radio France, and has delivered workshops and author talks at writing retreats, festivals and bookshops in France, the UK and in India. Hazel has been Writer in Residence for Your Writeful Place in France and the UK and at the Sivananda Ashram in Southern India where she was commissioned to write a book about Ashram life. In addition to writing, Hazel runs literary salons and events in Paris and London as well as writers retreats at her farmhouse in the French Loire Valley.