About

Best-selling authors Dorothy Koomson and Araminta Hall both began their writing careers as journalists. Hear from them in conversation with Sharon Wright - who met them when they worked on a national women's magazine - for a lively discussion about why journalists write books.

Dorothy Koomson is an award-winning, global bestselling author of 23 novels. Her novels include the Sunday Times bestsellers I Know What You’ve Done, Tell Me Your Secret, The Brighton Mermaid and My Best Friend’s Girl. Her new novel, The Quiet Girls, was published in March 2026. Her novels The Ice Cream Girls and The Rose Petal Beach were both shortlisted for the British Book Awards in 2010 and 2013, respectively. In 2021, Dorothy featured on the Powerlist as one of the most influential Black people in Britain. She has appeared in GQ Style as a Black British trailblazer, and was a judge for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. She believes passionately that everyone should have the opportunity to tell their story and regularly mentors aspiring authors.

Araminta Hall was first published in 2011 and is the author of seven novels. Unreliable Narrator is her latest and was published in March 2026. Two of her novels, Everything & Nothing and One of the Good Guys, have been Richard and Judy picks. Her 2020 novel, Imperfect Women, is a major series on Apple TV starring Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington and Kate Mara. She also teaches creative writing and sits on the board of the Beyond the Book festival in Brighton, where she lives with her husband and various iterations of her three grown-up children. 

Journalist and Editor of the Brontë Society Gazette Sharon Wright is the author of The Lost History of the Lady Aeronauts; Mother of the Brontës: The Life of Maria Branwell and co-author with Ann Dinsdale of Let Me In: the Brontës in Bricks and Mortar. She writes for national magazines and newspapers including The Times and Woman & Home and has appeared on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and Today programmes. Research for Let Me In led to her winning a correction to the Brontë memorial in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.