Flying Up the Mountain

Elizabeth-Irene Baitie is the director of a medical laboratory. She holds an MSc in Clinical Biochemistry with Molecular Biology from the University of Surrey, UK. “Working in a lab is about running tests and making discoveries,” she says. “Life is like that. You don’t realize who you are until you’re tested.” Her stories for children and young adults simultaneously tug at and thrill the heart. Her first children’s book, A Saint in Brown Sandals, won the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa. Subsequent young adult novels— The Twelfth Heart, The Dorm Challenge, Rattling in the Closet, and The Lion’s Whisper— were awarded the Burt Award for African Young Adult Literature. She has had seven novels published to date and lives in vibrant Accra with her husband. They are parents to three largely grown- up children.