Originally from Massachusetts, Elizabeth (Liz) Shick began her international journey as a young college student when in the mid 1980s, majoring in Africana Studies, she spent a year at university in Tanzania. Thereafter, she went on to obtain a Master’s of International Affairs in Economic and Political Development at Columbia University. This opened the door to a career in humanitarian affairs and development with country postings in The Gambia, Angola, Mozambique, Italy, Malawi, Myanmar, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Liz, along with her Italian-Australian husband, is currently living and working. While living in Rome, she took a creative writing course. A year later and living in Malawi, she began her first novel. Liz’s Malawi novel was not published, but her second novel, The Golden Land, inspired by six years living in Myanmar, won the 2021 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Prize for The Novel.