The name's Pellet. Bianca Pellet.
(It's pronounced PELL-AY. Honestly. We all know it should be spelt Pellé. In my 2.5 years of being married so far, a few hideous Hyacinth Bouquet-style moments have already been experienced. But despite that I do still really like being married...so far.)
I attended the University of Exeter (Classics and English BA; 2:1) and then the University of Oxford (MSt Linguistics; pass) before moving to France in 2008, where I work in an international school teaching English (mostly to native speakers, so the curriculum is much the same as what would be followed in my native Britain) and social studies (sounds woolly, but isn't - you try extracting 4000 words of coursework out of a 16-year-old). I started Bianca's Book Blog in 2009 partly out of boredom and partly out of missing my days at the university rag, where I spent an awful lot of time reviewing books. I also completed the Livejournal 50 book challenge in 2007 (well, sort of...I participated, but if I recall correctly I didn't quite make the full 50), and yet did not do so in 2008. I missed recording what I had read, and so made up my mind to do so in later years, albeit off Livejournal. While I love reviewing books and occasionally even get sent free ones, it is sadly not yet enough for me to live on.
I have also participated once to date in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. I "won", completing the requisite 50,000 words, and while I don't yet feel that what I produced is yet of publishable quality, the entire experience was something I found amazingly empowering and liberating. I not only plan to participate again this year, but also plan to set up an in-school NaNoWriMo this year for my students, on a slightly smaller scale.
I also keep two other blogs (a beauty blog, and a food blog - my husband also contributes to the latter) which indulge my lifestyle-related interests, and in addition to these topics, I also write on various other lifestyle topics on request (such as travel and expat issues), as well as writing poetry and novellas (see above) and translating texts from French to English. While teaching has its perks, the long-term aim is to be writing and translating full-time.
Should you have a journalistic or translation-related assignment and feel I could adequately fulfil the related requirements (and indeed surpass them!), please feel free to contact me at bianca[DOT]dee[AT]gmail[DOT]com.
