Karin Cambrai

Karin Cambrai is a writer with, by her own description, a fascinating and varied history. Trained as an architect, she practiced in the mainstream commercial area for over 12 years, acting as project architect for a livery company extension, a bank and the public interiors of a West End hotel. With the participation of her colleagues, she took part in a variety of competitions, before returned to research at the Royal College of Art. This centred on the individual and social grouping human needs in order to find pointers for designing life-enhancing environments.

At the same time she tested her ideas in teaching interior design, while effecting a gradual change into working with visual imagery, graphics, video production and scripting. Over a period this also included public relations work and features writing for a number of publications. She has been writing children's books for about 16 years - her first published book “Boffy” , published in 1997 and followed by “Boffy II”, “Skycosting”, “Lomé Wish” and the forthcoming book “Where is Mrs Frumpety”. Karin frequently goes into schools to read her stories and discuss with the 6 to 9 year age group. Her most recent visits were to a primary school in Huyton, where she also gave classes in creative writing.

In addition, over the last 18 months she has returned to experiment with her visual arts roots, this time in the field of stained glass and the "Tiffany" technique, at the same time incorporating simple flat glass kilnwork.

Karin believes that writing is an equally important aspect of human expression and that it should be as exciting as all the more visual arts, revealing page by page what uniquely it has to offer. The illustrations for her stories, collaborating with a different artist for each book, are therefore another facet of the creative process, as she sees no conflict in integrating a number of media skills and minds to provide a truly enriching experience. These are voyages of discovery, intended to broaden and extend vistas, as part of the introduction to a life-long love of creative communication.