About Ronali

I was born and bred in Middlesex, to strict Roman Catholic parents of Sri Lankan origin who kept me under virtual house arrest until my early twenties. (Just kidding - well, kind of.)

After disappointing my parents by achieving shocking results in the sciences (seriously, my under-achieving school asked me not to take a Chemistry O-Level because they didn’t want me to mess up their statistics), they eventually gave up and left me to my own devices, which mostly consisted of ballet and books.

When it became clear that a career as a ballerina wasn’t possible for a small brown girl, and who am I kidding, I wasn’t good enough, I threw my efforts into reading and creative writing. I ended up at King’s College London (did I mention the virtual house arrest? I lived at home throughout), where I gained an Honours degree in English Literature.

After rejections from hundreds of handwritten applications to publishers, TV companies and even banking (I was a huge fan of the TV series, Capital City and Working Girl is one of my FAVOURITE movies), I scouted around for something else.

Much as it pained me to succumb to a family tradition, I ended up studying law at the College of Law for two years. Once again, there were no jobs for brown girls with foreign sounding surnames, and after three hundred applications (and RSI - see above) and two interviews, I had to find something else to pay the bills.

A friend told me about Arthur Andersen (yes, them) so I applied. And so began a career in international tax during which I tried KPMG, a short stint as a trainee lawyer at PwC Legal and finally many years at PwC.

The writing took a back seat, but the reading didn’t. What else are you supposed to do to relieve the boredom of poring over international tax law?

Eventually, I had two wonderful children (after years of fertility treatment) and it became impossible to maintain a career and be there for my kids, so I became a stay-at-home mother. And this was an absolute privilege in terms of both being able to be with my kids, but mostly to be able to afford to do so. My mum never had the same opportunity and juggled a full-time job with being an absolutely amazing mother.

After decades of vicarious living through books and writing questionable fan fiction, I rediscovered my passion for writing and graduated with a MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Brunel University under the supervision of Professor Bernardine Evaristo.

If you want to know more about my creative journey, see my article for femalefirst.co.uk on my News page.