I'm Carla. I draw, and I write.

I trained as a neuroscientist. Both of my children were born prematurely, and the years that followed became research of a different kind: reading everything I could find, asking clinicians the questions I couldn't answer myself, and eventually writing it down. That became Born Strong, published in English, Dutch and Portuguese — part memoir, part science, written because the book I needed didn't exist.

I draw every day. Most mornings I cut a photograph out of the newspaper, paste it into a sketchbook, and draw from it. Charcoal, pencil and ink, mostly; lately acrylic and watercolour too. Some of them work. Most of them don't. The point is the next one.

And I write, most days. Born Strong took four years of it. What I’m writing now is fiction, and the two practices have started to feed each other: the drawing keeps the hand honest, the writing keeps asking why.

I work from a room at home, between one school run and the next.

This is where the work lives.