Dorothy Koomson (born 1971 in London) is a contemporary English novelist, who is of

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

ian descent. She has been described as "Britain's biggest selling black author of adult fiction".

Biography

Koomson has two degrees in Psychology and Journalism when she graduated from

Leeds University , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

( Trinity and All Saints College). She has written for a number of women's magazines and newspapers, as well as having had over a dozen successful novels published in the UK and US. Koomson spent two years living in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

and is currently living in

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

. Koomson wrote her first novel, the unpublished "There's A Thin Line Between Love And Hate", when she was 13. In 2003 her

debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...

, ''The Cupid Effect'', was published. Her second novel, ''The Chocolate Run'', was published in 2004. In 2006, she published her third novel, '' My Best Friend's Girl''. The book was chosen for the Richard and Judy's Summer Reads shortlist and it received a huge sales boost. Koomson's fourth and fifth novels, ''Marshmallows For Breakfast'' and ''Goodnight, Beautiful'', were published in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Koomson's sixth novel, ''

The Ice Cream Girls ''The Ice Cream Girls'' is a three-part British television crime drama, first broadcast in 2013, based on the bestselling novel by Dorothy Koomson. The story follows two vulnerable teenage girls, Serena Gorringe (Lorraine Burroughs) and Poppy Ca ...

'', was published in 2010. Koomson's seventh novel, ''The Woman He Loved Before'', was released on 3 February 2011. Her eighth book, ''The Rose Petal Beach'', came out in August 2012 and was released in paperback form in April 2013. Her ninth book, ''The Flavours of Love'', was published in November 2013, after which she took a longer break before writing her tenth book, ''That Girl From Nowhere'', which was published in April 2015. Her novels have been translated into over 30 languages. During the 2020

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...

protests calling for racial justice, Koomson criticised the UK publishing industry as being a “hostile environment for black authors”, stating that those in the industry have gaslighted Black authors and demeaned, demoralised, and discarded them in reality, while portraying an image of support to the public. Her experiences in the publishing industry were also discussed in an article responding to the "Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing" report. Later that year, Koomson was recognised as one of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

's 100 most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage when she was included in the

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

edition of the annual ''

Powerlist The ''Powerlist'' is a list of the 100 most influential people of African or African Caribbean heritage in the United Kingdom. The list is updated annually and has been published in book format by Powerful Media since 2007. The ''Powerlist'' is ...

''. In 2020 Koomson launched a podcast intended to help 'demystify the book world'.

In popular culture

* The television adaptation of her novel

Left Bank Pictures Left Bank Pictures (stylized as LEFT BANK Pictures) is a British film and television production company. It was formed in 2007 and was the first British media company to receive investment from BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. Lef ...

was shown on ITV in the UK in 2013 and had nearly 5 million viewers. * Koomson's work was referenced in

Bernardine Evaristo Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo, (born 28 May 1959) is a British author and academic. Her novel ''Girl, Woman, Other'', jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's ''The Testaments'', making her the first woman with Black ...

Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a Literary award, literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United King ...

-winning

Girl, Woman, Other ''Girl, Woman, Other'' is the eighth novel by Bernardine Evaristo. Published in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton, it follows the lives of 12 characters in the United Kingdom over the course of several decades. The book was the co-winner of the 2019 Booker ...

Bibliography

* ''The Cupid Effect'', 2003 * ''The Chocolate Run'', 2004 * '' My Best Friend's Girl'', 2006 * ''Marshmallows For Breakfast'', 2007 * ''Goodnight, Beautiful'', 2008 * ''

'', 2010 * ''The Woman He Loved Before'', 2011 * ''The Rose Petal Beach'', 2012 * ''The Flavours of Love'', 2013 * ''That Girl From Nowhere'', 2015 * ''When I Was Invisible'', 2015 * ''The Friend'', 2017 * ''The Beach Wedding (Quick Reads)'', 2018 * ''The Brighton Mermaid'', 2018 * ''Tell Me Your Secret, 2019'' * ''All My Lies Are True (Ice Cream Girls 2), 2020''

References

External links

Official website

Dorothy Koomson
at

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Koomson on the 'Richard and Judy bookclub

* Rykesha Hudson
"Dorothy Koomson: Making Black Women Visible"
''

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'', 14 May 2016. {{DEFAULTSORT:Koomson, Dorothy Black British women writers 21st-century English novelists Writers from London Living people 1971 births English people of Ghanaian descent English women novelists 21st-century English women writers Alumni of Leeds Trinity University