Mina Hepsen was born in Istanbul, Turkey. To her parent`s surprise (and frequently misfortune) she began to speak at 6months old. Soon she was telling stories of crazy monkeys who jumped on people from tall trees. After spending the first ten years of her life in Germany (where she got addicted to pretzels and roasted chicken), Mina`s parents moved her back to Istanbul and she studied there at an International School. Ten years later Mina was wearing six layers of fleece, two scarves, a hat, mittens and four pairs of socks on top of each other in Boston, Massachusetts. Four years after that (when she had grown truly comfortable with terms like black ice) she graduated from Tufts University with a degree in Political Science and Philosophy. Having had enough of the cold weather, she then moved to Miami, Florida where she was a regular of Books& Books, a store which would open bright and early and make the best fresh lemonades and organic spinach soups. A year after that, Mina felt it was time to move again and so, after receiving a pop up e-mail in her hotmail account saying "come to Edinburgh!" she decided "Why not?" and moved to Scotland. Currently, she spends her time carting her stuff around various café`s in Old Town, doing a PhD degree in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh and trying to convince her two younger sisters not to grow up.