Rowan Coleman

Rowan Coleman is the internationally bestselling author and screenwriter of more than thirty cross-genre novels and screenplays. Her first novel Growing Up Twice (Arrow 2002) was a WHSmith Fresh Talent winner. In 2013 her novel about a woman escaping domestic abuse, Dearest Rose (Arrow 2012), won the RNA Epic Romance Novel of the Year, following which she published the novella Woman Walks into a Bar, with all her profits going to the domestic abuse charity, Refuge. In 2014 her novel The Memory Book (Ebury 2013), which is a first-person account of a woman in her forties with early onset Alzheimer’s, was a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and Sunday Times bestseller. In 2018 The Summer of Impossible Things (Ebury 2017), a genre-fluid story of time travel and revenge, was chosen by the Zoë Ball Book Club on ITV, and is currently under option with Braven films.

In 2018 Rowan began to write a series of gothic crime novels under the name Bella Ellis. The Brontë Mysteries imagine that before they were renowned authors the Brontë sisters were amateur detectives. Carefully researched to be biographically accurate, the novels reflect Rowan’s passion and enthusiasm for the trailblazing women of nineteenth-century literature.

In 2020 Rowan embarked on co-writing a screenplay with author and screenwriter Mark Stay based on a short story of hers, entitled ‘Saturday Night Stevie’, which is currently in development with Yellow Film, and they are now working on their second project together.

Throughout her career as an author Rowan has been passionate about opening doors for those who might find it harder to get past the gatekeepers of the arts, and empowering and encouraging emerging writers. She has tutored and mentored hundreds of students, many of whom are now published. As a dyslexic and neurodivergent person, Rowan has worked with several literacy charities and wrote two novellas for the Quick Reads initiative. Her latest novel From Now Until Forever (Hodder 2023) is a centuries-spanning love story for the ages, and was published in August 2023. Rowan lives in Scarborough with her large family and two dogs.