Ilona Bannister is a New Yorker who now makes her home in Brighton with her husbandand sons. She is a dual qualified US lawyer and UK solicitor and practiced immigrationlaw in the UK before she started writing fiction. Her family's history of migration to theUS, her experience as an American mother raising children in the UK, and her work as alawyer have led her to write stories about otherness, belonging, and what it means tobe on the outside of a place looking in. Her first book When I Ran Away was longlistedfor the First Novel Prize in 2021.
