That Girl from Nowhere

About Dorothy Koomson

Dorothy Koomson  is an award-winning, global bestselling author whose novels include the Sunday Times bestsellers The Friend, That Girl from Nowhere, The Ice Cream Girls, The Woman He Loved Before, The Chocolate Run and My Best Friend’s Girl. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages with sales that exceed 2 million copies in the UK alone. Dorothy’s books are powerful, thought-provoking and compelling ‘emotional thrillers’ where moral dilemmas are central and where the complex emotions of family and friendships are explored. Her third book, My Best Friend’s Girl, was selected for the Richard & Judy Summer Reads of 2006, and her novels The Ice Cream Girls and The Rose Petal Beach were both shortlisted for the British Book Awards in 2010 and 2013, respectively. A TV adaptation loosely based on The Ice Cream Girls was first shown on ITV1 in 2013. Her novels have all been Sunday Times Top 10 bestsellers including That Girl from Nowhere, When I Was Invisible, The Friend and Tell Me Your Secret.

Dorothy recently featured on the 2021 Powerlist as one of the most influential Black people in Britain and appeared in GQ Style as a Black British trailblazer. She uses her platform to support new writers and recently launched ‘The Happy Author’ podcast and is a Judge for the 2021 Grazia and Women’s Prize for Fiction First Chapter competition. This year she also contributed to the World Book Night collection, Stories to Make You Smile, to the Feminist Book Society’s This Is How We Come Back Stronger and to a collection of love stories by women of colour, Who’s Loving You.

Passionate about the importance of reading and literacy, Dorothy is a regular speaker in libraries and supports the work of the National Literacy Trust, an independent charity that transforms lives through literacy www.literacytrust.org.uk and Little Green Pig www.littlegreenpig.org.uk, a Brighton and Hove based charity that offers free writing workshops for young people in need. Dorothy lives in Brighton (well, Hove, actually) and the city is an ever-present character in her novels.