(from website)When my publisher asked me to submit a 200 word biography for their authors' website, I thought about dropping the usual bio platitudes and submitting the following: "Natasha Mostert is a spectacularly brilliant, raven-haired psychic who saw her first ghost at the age of four. She likes to take midnight rides on horseback and practises levitation twice a day. However, upon reflection I didn't think my editor would be too amused by this flight of fancy. So here it is, the official (and much less exciting) Natasha Mostert biography:
Natasha Mostert is South African. She grew up in Pretoria and Johannesburg but currently lives in London with her husband, Frederick. She still keeps an apartment in the university town of Stellenbosch in the Cape province.
She is the author of five novels. Her fourth novel, SEASON OF THE WITCH, is a modern gothic thriller about techgnosis and the Art of Memory and won the Book to Talk About: World Book Day 2009 Award. Film rights were sold to Allotria Productions with Emmy-award winning screenwriter, Andrew Davies, commissioned to write the script. Her fifth novel, THE KEEPER, is a thriller about martial arts, chi and quantum physics. Mostert returned to the subject of memory in her latest novel, DARK PRAYER, which is described by Kirkus Reviews a "brainy, fast-moving thriller" in which "Mostert brings together fascinating strands of biology, psychology and mysticism."
Mostert is a keen kickboxer. Visit her website at www.natashamostert.com to find out more about her involvement with the CPAU Fighting for Peace project, which teaches Afghan women how to box and feel empowered in their lives.
Educated in South Africa and at Columbia University, New York, Mostert majored in modern languages and also holds graduate degrees in Lexicography and Applied Linguistics. She has worked as a teacher in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and as project coordinator in the publishing department of public television station WNET/Thirteen in New York City. Her political opinion pieces have appeared on the op-ed page of The New York Times, in Newsweek, The Independent and The Times (London).
Future goals include writing poetry, executing a perfect spinning backkick and coming face to face with the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe.