Bee Rowlatt is a writer and cultural events programmer. One Woman Crime Wave (Renard) is her first novel. Her travelogue In Search of Mary (Alma) won the Society of Authors’ K Blundell Trust award. The best-seller Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad (Penguin), co-written with May Witwit, was dramatised by the BBC.

Bee is one of the lead presenters on the BBC docuseries Austen: Rise of a Genius. She chaired the Mary on the Green campaign to memorialise Mary Wollstonecraft and is a founding Trustee of the human rights education charity the Wollstonecraft Society. She wrote the play An Amazon Stept Out for its West End gala at the Lyric Theatre.  

Bee contributed to Virago’s Fifty Shades of Feminism, and clocked over two decades as a broadcast journalist for BBC World Service. She speaks fluent Spanish and has a research background in Latin America. She’s written for BBC Online, The Telegraph, Grazia, Die Welt, Times, Guardian and Daily Mail.

Bee’s public speaking includes the Jaipur Literature Festivals in India, London and Belfast, 5×15, Hay Festivals in Cartagena and Xalapa, Southbank WOW festival, and British Council literary events in Iraq, Norway, Palestine and Russia. She hails from Yorkshire, used to be a showgirl, and has four kids. She was awarded an MBE for services to women’s rights in the 2025 New Year’s Honours. (Image: Sveta Mishina)