Astrid is a USA Today Bestselling and Literary Classics award-winning author, social anthropologist, and transformational life coach. She grew up in South Africa and currently lives in Malmö, Sweden (after having lived in many exciting and interesting places) with her husband and their two children. Her South African-German heritage and the experiences of living and integrating into other societies have given Astrid a great deal to think about and process. The training in anthropology has given her the tools to think beyond simple stereotypes and ideological explanations of social interaction, while the understanding she has of the human potential to achieve anything we put our minds to, which underlies her certification as a transformational life coach, allows Astrid to see what is possible and to appreciate the human capacity to achieve success in the face of adversity, no matter the obstacles. Astrid’s parents instilled in her a love for books, and the natural world that we inhabit. This love has led to a deep appreciation of the written word and the desire to contribute as much as she can towards improving the state of the world. Astrid would like to use her expertise and passion for cultures to help us move forward. She writes transformation fiction: incorporating transformation principles in novels, rather than writing another self-help book. This is more than Up-lit. Astrid’s books are intended to be uplifting, but also to provoke thought and help people question the situations they find themselves in, as well as to identify how they themselves can transcend their circumstances. Astrid is very interested in minority group questions, considerations on social standards of beauty and the negative consequences these have and would like to make the fantasy genre accessible to people of non-white, non-Western backgrounds. Astrid feels the fantasy genre has become too restrictive with limited representations of race, ethnicity, and culture, and seeks to explore other paths on this writing journey, incorporating her background in anthropology and psychology to create engaging experiences, which also provide food for thought on the diverse topics she finds most important, such as racism, minority rights, cultural diversity, culture change, intolerance, humanity’s environmental impact and much more.