Lanisha Butterfield

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.