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J. M. Ashwell was born in Pretoria,
South Africa in 1957. She has lived in
Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa most
of her life until her and her family
relocated to Texas in 1996. J. M.
Ashwell was educated in Pretoria at
Loreto Convent. Her education is in the
medical field where she was trained as a
medical technologist and clinical
technologist with distinctions in both
microbiology and hematology. She held
dual positions as principal technologist
at a teaching hospital where she ran the
sub-departments of vascular technology
and auto-transfusion and was responsible
for lecturing post and undergrad medical
students on vascular technology and
autotransfusion. Also through her
medical background and extensive
experience, J. M. Ashwell has worked on
several white papers (in South Africa
those are government papers).
J. M. Ashwell wrote her first
article when she was eight years old,
covering the assassination of the
president of South Africa kickstarting
her writing career at a young age. Since
then, using her African roots, her
medical background and the most
important tool, her imagination, she
writes in the thriller, Sci-Fi and
Fantasy, poetry, and young
adult-children’s genres.
Her work including her
poetry, has garnered a number of awards,
including The Horton Award, The
Ophthalmology award and the Wedgeworth
award. In addition, Barnes and Noble has
named her their Texas author of the
month in July 2006. In 2006, her short
story Saturday Morning at eMkhambathini
was published in Highlights Magazine.
She is also included in the bestseller
by John Randolph Price called Nothing
is Too Good to Be True. This author
has been the subject of newspaper
articles and a number of television
interviews and has been featured on
Lifetime Television who called her ‘an
author to watch.' While her thrillers
such as Tomorrow a Rainbow and
The Emeralds Flashed have a
medical/psychological flavor to them,
they have been compared to the work of
authors such as Robert Ludlum and Robin
Cook.
J. M. Ashwell is an
accomplished ballroom, Latin and disco
champion and instructor with several
gold medals as well as being a qualified
international roller skating judge and
coach in the speed and artistic
categories. She is also an accomplished
actress and singer with an operatic and
classical background. J. M. Ashwell
makes her home in East Texas and is now
a full time writer. |
