Kapka Kassabova describes herself as 'a poet, travel writer, novelist, and professionally displaced person'. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1973 she emigrated as a young adult to New Zealand, where she studied French and linguistics and subsequently completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington. She has written a number of poetry collections, two acclaimed novels, travel guides and many pieces of travel journalism. Her first collection of poems, All Roads Lead to the Sea, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for the First Best Book of Poetry; her first novel Reconnaissance won the 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in the South-East Asia-Pacific Region and was shortlisted in the Montana NZ Books Awards; she won the 2002 Cathay Pacific NZ Travel Writer of the Year Award.