Elizabeth-Irene Baitie

Elizabeth-Irene Baitie has won first prize in the Burt Award for African Literature twice: for The Twelfth Heart in 2009 and The Dorm Challenge in 2012. The Twelfth Heart sold some 35,000 copies in the two years after its win.

Scientist and writer

She was born in 1970 and went to Achimota School. She read biochemistry and chemistry at the University of Ghana, took a postgraduate qualification in clinical biochemistry at the University of Surrey, and co-founded Patholab Medical Laboratory in Adabraka, Accra, where she is a director. She has wanted to write since she was seven, and fits it in after work, at weekends and while commuting. She is married to Rami and they have three children.

Books

Her story "A Saint in Brown Sandals" won the junior category of the Macmillan Prize for Africa in 2006, and her novel Lea's Christmas had been shortlisted for the senior prize in 2002. She writes for preteens and older teenagers and prefers to give readers adventure and escape rather than stories of hardship. Both Burt Award books follow Mercy, a village girl who makes friends at boarding school. She visits schools and has worked with the Young Educators Foundation to promote reading.