Laura Steven is an author, journalist and screenwriter from the northernmost town in England. She has published eight books under various pen names, all with HarperCollins.
The Exact Opposite of Okay, her YA debut about
slut-shaming and the Friend Zone, won the inaugural Comedy Women In Print prize in 2019. Judged by a panel including Marian Keyes, CWIP was founded by stand-up comedian and Absolutely Fabulous star Helen Lederer to celebrate funny female fiction.
The sequel, A Girl Called Shameless, is out now, while The Love Hypothesis, her LGBTQ YA rom-com exploring consent, free will and astrophysics (no, really) has been optioned for TV by the Emmy-winning team at Lime Pictures. Her new YA novel The Society For Soulless Girls – a sapphic, supernatural retelling of Jekyll & Hyde – will be published in July 2022.
Her
In the journalism world, Laura started out at a glossy lifestyle publication before moving to Mslexia, a magazine supporting women writers. She has been featured in The i Paper, Buzzfeed, The Guardian and Living North, and has profiled authors like Brandon Sanderson for Publishers Weekly.
She has an MA in Creative Writing, and her TV pilot Clickbait reached the final eight in British Comedy's 2016 Sitcom Mission. Other screenwriting projects include BFI funding for a bonkers feature film about conspiracy theorists. She also won a Northern Writers Award in 2018 for her work-in-progress – a piece of speculative fiction exploring creativity as protest.
Literary agent: Chloe Seager at Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency
Screen agent: Kim Yau at Echo Lake Entertainment
