Quick Facts
Biography
Katie Fforde, née Catherine Rose Gordon-Cumming (born 27 September 1952), is a British romance novelist. Published since 1995, her romance novels are set in modern-day England.
She is founder of the Katie Fforde Bursary for writers who have yet to secure a publishing contract. She was for many years a committee member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and was elected its twenty-fifth chairman (2009–2011) and later its fourth president. In June 2010 she was announced as a patron of the UK's first National Short Story Week. In 2016 she launched the Stroud Contemporary Fiction Writing Competition as part of the first Stroud Book Festival.
Biography
Catherine Rose Gordon-Cumming was born on 27 September 1952 in Wimbledon, London, the daughter of Shirley Barbara Laub and Michael Willoughby Gordon-Cumming. Her grandfather was Sir William Gordon-Cumming. Her sister is fellow writer Jane Gordon-Cumming.
In 1972, she married Desmond Fforde, the nephew of banker John Standish Fforde and cousin of fellow writer Jasper Fforde. She has three children: Guy, Francis and Briony, and did not start writing until after the birth of her third child. She writes under her married name.
Fforde has lived near Stroud, Gloucestershire for over twenty years.
Many of Fforde's own experiences end up in her books. Her novel Going Dutch was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller in June 2007. She takes her research seriously. With each novel featuring different professions and backgrounds Fforde uses a 'method acting' style process using experiences such as being a porter in an auction house, making pottery, refurbishing furniture, examining the processes behind a dating website, and going on a Ray Mears survival course.
Anthologies edited
- Loves Me, Loves Me Not (2009)
Forewords
"Wannabe a Writer?" (Accent Press 2007) Author Jane Wenham-Jones