047 Somehow My Fate Is Linked Up With Ukraine’s Fate - LEONORA MERIEL talks about Living Brightly

Travelling Through... London, the World and Life

"Why would you wait until you are seventy? Now’s the time to tell your story!"

LEONORA MERIEL : author – entrepreneur – businesswoman – mother

"I like to live very brightly. Life is full of excitement waiting to happen."

LEONORA is a writer of literary fiction embracing a range of genres. She has two books published and two in the pipeline for publication this year. Leonora’s writing style is extraordinarily wide as she continues to challenge herself to evolve as a writer in the self-publishing world. Her books are stocked in all the main bookshops and online.

Leonora’s back story is as diverse and interesting as her novels. She studied literature at Edinburgh University, which offered a third year placement in a Canadian university. While in Toronto she met and married her Ukrainian husband and together they co-founded Yakaboo, the highly successful online bookshop in Ukraine. After ten years in Ukraine, circumstances changed and Leonora, now thirty, divorced, with two children, moved to Barcelona and began writing as she had always intended to do one day, however, in the heady days of her twenties, she had been swept along on an adventure working for the United Nations and then an international law firm in New York, before moving to Ukraine to become an entrepreneur, a businesswoman, a mother of two and complete an MBA which took her to Taiwan and China in the process.

Today, Leonora is back in London writing avidly in the realisation that she may have more stories to write than she can complete in a lifetime, so she has doubled her efforts to writing two books in parallel. She has re-married and has a one year old son whom it turns out also comes from a Ukrainian blood line on her husband’s side some generations back.

Leonora’s love for Ukraine, its people, its heritage and its fight for the future, weaves sinuously into her writing and characters. Her many life experiences to date informs her writing and as she remarks, her “I have a treasure trove of experiences to dig in to which will feed my writing forever.” her favourite writing quote is:

“It takes 20 years of living before you have something to write,

and another 10 years to learn how to write it.”

To find out more about LEONORA check out these links:

Website: https://leonorameriel.com/

BUY her BOOKS on her website, in a bookshop, or online bookstore.

• The Woman Behind The Waterfall
• The Unity Game
• And Breathe – launches in May 2022
• And a fourth book is due out later this year also.

Facebook: @leonoramerielwriter

Twitter: @leonora_meriel

Instagram: @leonorameriel

To find out about your podcast host Emma you can go to https://www.travellingthrough.co.uk/

A big thanks to Mariska Martina at https://www.mariskamartina.com/ for creating our wonderful podcast jingle!

P.S. Apologies for the little sound distortion blips which I could not eradicate at the minutes mentioned below and I hope it does detract from your enjoyment of my inspiring chat with Leonora.

5.50 - 6.00 (10 seconds)

6.25 - 6.50 (25 seconds)

14.20-15.10 (50 seconds)

56.40 - 56.55 (15 seconds)