All things books get team Scribe as excited as a kid in a candy store. So image our excitement when the author line up for Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature 2022 was announced. From homegrown talent to the writer of Netflix cult favourite, Bridgerton, we bring you nine of the names we are most excited about…..
Alka Joshi
Born in India and raised in the U.S. since the age of nine, at age 62, Joshi published her debut novel, The Henna Artist, which immediately became a New York Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick, was Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and is being developed into an episodic series by Miramax TV. The sequel, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, premiered June 2021, and will be followed by the third book in the trilogy in 2023.
Avni Doshi
Born in New Jersey and currently based in Dubai, Avni won the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize in 2013 and a Charles Pick Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in 2014. Her debut novel, Burnt Sugar, was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and is being translated into more than twenty languages.
Brit Bennett
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. She is one of the National Book Foundation's 2016 5 Under 35 honourees.
David Walliams
David has revolutionised reading for children and has become one of the most influential children’s writers today. Since the publication of his ground-breaking first novel, The Boy in the Dress (2008), Walliams has seen unprecedented growth. He has celebrated over 65 weeks (non-consecutive) at number one in the overall book charts and more than 190 weeks (non-consecutive) at number one in the Children’s charts – an achievement no other children’s writer has reached.
Jenny Lawson
Jenny is an award-winning humorist known for her great candor in sharing her struggle with mental illness. She lives in Texas with her husband and daughter and was constantly buying too many books, so she decided to skip the middleman and just started her own bookshop, which also serves booze because books and booze are what magic is made of. She has previously written Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy, both of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. She also wrote You Are Here, which inexplicably made it onto the New York Times bestseller list in spite of the fact that it was basically a very fun colouring book.
Julia Quinn
No.1 New York Times bestselling author, Julia Quinn, loves to dispel the myth that smart women don't read (or write) romance. A graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, Ms. Quinn is one of only sixteen members of Romance Writers of America's Hall of Fame. Her books have been translated into 32 languages. Netflix cult favourite Bridgerton is based on her popular series of historical romance, The Bridgertons.
Lucy Foley
Lucy is the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Hunting Party and The Guest List, with over a million copies sold worldwide. Her thrillers have also hit The New York Times and The Irish Times bestseller lists, been shortlisted for the Crime & Thriller Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards, selected as one of The Times and Sunday Times Crime Books of the Year, and The Guest List was a Reese’s Book Club choice.
Nadiya Hussain
Nadiya rose to fame after winning the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off. Since winning, Nadiya has presented her own cookery shows including her latest, Nadiya’s Fast Flavours which aired in Autumn 2021 and travelogues like The Chronicles of Nadiya for which she was nominated for an RTS for Breakthrough Presenter. Nadiya has published eight bestselling cookery and storybooks including Nadiya Bakes, as well as the Amir Sister series centred around identity and family.
Sara Gay Forden
Sara covered the Italian fashion industry from Milan for more than 15 years, chronicling the explosion of labels including Gucci, Armani, Versace, Prada and Ferragamo from family ateliers into mega brands. She is now based in Washington, D.C. with Bloomberg News, leading a team that covers lobbying and the challenges faced by big technology companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google.
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