Nicola Belluomo has been an archivist, a nurse, and almost a midwife. She now teaches English as a Second Language from her home on the Devon – Somerset border in the UK. As a child and the daughter of an RAF officer, the place she called home and hearth was her grandparents' village in South Wales which inspired the lane, the hill and the churchyard featured in The Seventh Room. Night-swimming from a row-boat off Corfu, and the magical realism of the Scottish mountain winds are also biographical. Studying English Literature and Drama at Loughborough University, she learned that the immersive reading of fiction and non-fiction can teach humankind more about itself than all the current affairs and social media in the world.