After her secondary education, Alison Donnell went to study at Atlantic College, a boarding college with students from 70 different countries and a mission of promoting international understanding. At the same time, her parents moved to India from the UK and her enduring interests in travel as well as African and Asian expressive cultures were able to flourish. At University she was inspired by a visiting lecturer from the University of the West Indies to study Caribbean literature and went on to complete a PhD at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick. She has published widely in the field of Caribbean and postcolonial literatures and is joint editor of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. She is currently a Reader in Postcolonial and English Literatures at Nottingham Trent University. Alison is married and has two sons.