Louise Beech

As a child, Louise Beech told everyone she was going to be a world-famous novelist one day. She once bet her mum ten pounds that she’d be published by thirty – her first newspaper column was published when she was thirty-one.

She finally got a book deal in 2015. Her debut, How to be Brave, got to No4 on Amazon and was a Guardian Readers’ Pick; Maria in the Moon was described as ‘quirky, darkly comic and heartfelt’ by the Sunday Mirror; The Lion Tamer Who Lost shortlisted for the Popular Romantic Novel of 2019 at the RNA Awards and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019; Call Me Star Girl longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize and was Best magazine’s Best Book of the Year 2019; and I Am Dust was a Crime Magazine Monthly Pick. This Is How We Are Human will be published in June 2021.

Louise still hasn’t given her mum that tenner though.

Louise also writes under the name Louise Swanson, and her first book in that guise, End of Story, was published in March 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton.