Yazmin Raven
Yazmin Raven was born in Tower Hamlets, London to strict Muslim Bangladeshi parents who emigrated to the UK in the 1970s. Yazmin lived an isolated existence alien to the Western way of life and spent the majority of her life fighting against cultural expectations. After finding herself engaged by force at the age of 13 during a routine family visit to Bangladesh with her family, Yazmin found a way to delay her marriage and convince her parents to bring her back on to English soil. Safely back at home, she began to plot her escape and, at the age of 16, she managed to run away from the violence of her childhood and vanish into the green Highlands which have kept her safe ever since. Yazmin now happily spends her time joyously enjoying her hard-earned freedom whilst worshipping her little boy. She has worked for newspapers and the Civil Service since her escape and now works part-time for a university. She lives in a cosy house somewhere in Scotland with her son where she got the call to write her story.