Camilla Gibb news, as read in Quill & Quire

You may have seen her on the cover of this month's Quill & Quire, if you're into that sort of thing.

I love her. I have loved her since Sweetness in the belly first came out, and I heard her speak at Blue Met. Shut down your computer and go read Sweetness if you haven't already. It follows Lilly, orphaned by her hippie British parents and left to be raised in an Islamic shrine in Morocco. Lilly later emigrates to Ethiopia (not a great idea in the 1980s) and, later, England, and the book follows her journey as both an eternal migrant and a global citizen, always somewhere between two worlds. She eventually sets up an organisation in London that attempts to reunify families separated by the Dergue regime and Ethiopian famine, becoming the link between people in more ways than one.

That being said, I hadn't heard too much from Camilla since Sweetness. I am not one for gossip, either, but this story moved me. Q & Q informs me that Camilla has a new novel coming out in August, The Beauty of humanity movement, and is working on a memoir. More personally, she is finding her way through the second trimester of a pregnancy after her longtime partner left her three months ago.

I also learned that Camilla's writing took off after an acquaintance gave her $6000 to quit her job and write (he left a note: "No strings attached"). She is now paying it forward, so to speak, by giving $6000 to a Vietnamese tour guide and who dreamed of opening a pho restaurant. Phuong helped her with her new book when she was on vacation, introducing her to a cook who became the inspiration for the main character in her new book.

It's really not often that I tear up when reading Q & Q. I swear.