Katie Fforde

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. 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.

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. Fforde takes the research for her books seriously, employing a 'method acting'-style approach to the different professions and backgrounds featured in her novels, 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.