Jenny Colgan

Jenny Colgan is a Scottish novelist born in Prestwick, Ayrshire, in 1971. She studied at the University of Edinburgh and worked for six years in healthcare administration before her 1999 debut novel, Amanda's Wedding, launched a long career in romantic comedy fiction. Over more than two decades she has become one of the genre's most prolific and consistent voices, publishing multiple linked series -- Little Beach Street Bakery, Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop, the Scottish Bookshop, the Christmas Bookshop, and the Scottish Island of Mure -- alongside a long run of standalone comedies.

Her books return again and again to a distinctive template: a woman whose life has stalled or collapsed rebuilds it around a small, traditional food or book business in a tightly drawn community, usually somewhere coastal, remote, or otherwise removed from London life. She has also written official Doctor Who tie-in fiction for BBC Books under the byline Jenny T. Colgan, including novels for the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors and a novelisation of the Tenth Doctor's Christmas special.

Colgan has sold more than 2.5 million copies of her work, translated into 25 languages, and won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance and the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award (2013). She is married to marine engineer Andrew Beaton, has three children, and divides her time between France and London, continuing to publish regularly across her various series and standalone titles.