Flower Block

Lanisha is a lifelong book junkie, whose quiet ambition of becoming an author – long-held and nurtured with lunchtime trips to the local bookshop – were realised during lockdown, with a serendipitous, snap decision to join an online Penguin Children’s Book Workshop. A woman of Black mixed race heritage, born and raised on a council estate in Oxford, to a hardworking single mother, she is very proud of her working class roots and hopes to challenge misconceptions of council estate life and remind readers – that, no matter where they are from, or what their family might look like, they are just as worthy of fairy-tale and magic, as anyone else. Her debut children’s picture book, Flower Block, publishes in 2024. Hoang Giang was born in Dalat, a small highland city in Vietnam, before moving to Ho Chi Minh City to work as an illustrator. She always has fun while working and likes to make her characters as lively as possible - because the story belongs to the characters, themselves.