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Award-winning writer and film-maker Sharon van Wyk is based in Pretoria, South Africa.
Born in Cambridge in England, where she was raised, and educated, she fell in love with Africa and its wild places at an early age, thanks to her family hauling her to Kenya, South Africa and what is now Zimbabwe before the age of 10.
She began working in journalism in the early 1980s, pushed into it, she says by her first boyfriend, rock guitarist Phil Collen of Def Leppard. “I used to write him long letters while he was touring and he kept nagging me to turn pro, so I did, writing for heavy metal magazines!”
Writing concert reviews turned into mainstream journalism with stints on top newspapers and magazines in the UK before Sharon traded black leather for khaki, returning permanently to South Africa 17 years ago. She now writes widely on conservation, eco-tourism and travel, and makes natural history documentaries with her company, Painted Earth Productions. “My life has been a safari extraordinaire, and the bush is where I find my bliss” she says.