Sue Slipman was born in 1949, in a working-class family. She graduated in English from the University of Wales, and later took a postgraduate course at the University of Leeds and a PGCE at the University of London. She has been a Trades Union Official, run a national charity and a few consumer champion organisations, chaired the Financial Ombudsman Service, set up a couple of trades associations including one for Foundation Trusts in the English National Health Service and is currently Deputy Chair of Kings College Hospital in South East London and Chair of the Kings Health Partners’ Haematology Institute. Campaigner and political activist, she was awarded an O.B.E for services to charity. She was the first woman elected as President of the National Union of Students in the UK. She has had a house in a small village in the Alpujarra mountain range for over twenty years, which she loves, and which inspired her to write the collection of stories Tales from the Alpujarra.