Roopa Farooki

Roopa Farooki was born in Lahore, Pakistan and brought up in London. She read PPE at New College, Oxford, and turned to writing after careers in corporate finance and advertising. She has written six novels to critical acclaim: Bitter Sweets (Macmillan, 2007), Corner Shop (Macmillan, 2008), The Way Things Look to Me (Macmillan, 2009), Half Life (Macmillan, 2010), The Flying Man (Headline, 2012) and The Good Children (Headline/Tinder Press, 2014). She has twice been longlisted for the Orange prize, and also longlisted for the Impac Dublin literary award and the DSC prize for south Asian literature. She has been shortlisted for the Orange new writers’ award and the Muslim writers’ awards. In 2013 she was awarded the John C. Laurence prize from the Authors’ Foundation for writing which improves understanding between races, in recognition of her multicultural fiction.

Roopa’s novels have been published internationally and translated into 12 languages in Europe. She has written for the Guardian, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, National Geographic Traveller, Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Own, Red, Psychologies and other national newspapers and magazines. Roopa is the ambassador for family for the counselling charity, Relate. She has taught on the masters’ course in prose fiction at Canterbury Christ Church University and teaches creative writing at the University of Kent and for Kent Adult Education. She has guest-lectured for the Arvon Foundation and at the University of Oxford. She lives in Kent with her husband, two young sons and twin daughters.