Meet the author

Katie Kirby.

Writer & illustrator · United Kingdom

Katie Kirby: creator of Lottie Brooks, the doodled secondary-school diary series that bottles every excruciating, hopeful moment of being eleven — a warm, laugh-out-loud UK favourite for 9–12s.

Katie Kirby is a British author-illustrator who lives by the sea in Hove, best known for the bestselling Lottie Brooks series. After a career in London advertising and a hit parenting blog and book, Hurrah for Gin, she turned to children's fiction with The Extremely Embarrassing Life of Lottie Brooks, a diary of doodles, lists, text threads and glorious over-sharing that follows Lottie through the agonies of secondary school. Wrong pencil cases, first crushes, friendship wobbles and mean-girl cliques all get the cringe-comedy treatment, but there's a genuinely anxious, hopeful heart underneath. Painfully relatable and laugh-out-loud funny, the series is a UK favourite for 9–12s and a natural next step for readers who love Dork Diaries and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.