J’AIME JULY/AUGUST 2023

F E AT U R E
A dream debut
BIRMINGHAM AUTHOR KATIE BISHOP IS STORMING THE BESTSELLER CHARTS WITH HER DEBUT
NOVEL THE GIRLS OF SUMMER, A GRIPPING TAKE ON FIRST LOVE EXAMINED THROUGH THE LENS OF
THE #METOO MOVEMENT. AMY NORBURY DISCOVERS MORE
When Katie Bishop walked into her local bookshop
to be greeted with piles of her debut novel staring
back at her, it was a dream come true. When
she headed over to one of Birmingham’s biggest
bookstores, Waterstones, only to discover The Girls
of Summer taking pride of place at the front of
the store and sharing shelf space with one of her
favourite authors, it took publication day from
dreamlike to surreal.
Topical and conversation sparking, The Girls of
Summer is a fresh take on consent, power, and how
the memories we hold onto aren’t always the truth as
30-year-old Rachel is forced to confront the reality
of a relationship she had with an older man in her
late teens, to realise that all is not as rose-tinted as it
seems.
Early reviews have seen the novel lauded as one of
the hottest debuts of 2023, and picked as a summer
must-read by every outlet from The Times, The
Independent and The Sun, to the New York Post,
Glamour, and Hello magazine. Apple Books picked
The Girls of Summer as their Best of the Month,
while a Booklist review compared Katie’s gripping
tale to both HBO’s smash hit The White Lotus and
Kate Elizabeth Russell’s Sunday Times bestseller My
Dark Vanessa.
It’s been something of a whirlwind for the 31-yearold
since The Girls of Summer hit the shelves at the
end of May. But while Katie, who’s originally from
Nuneaton, had long dreamed of publishing a novel,
it wasn’t something she ever thought would truly
happen.
“I’ve always loved to write, and I’ve always been a
really big reader, but never considered doing it as a
career,” says Katie.
Katie started out in academic publishing, putting the
idea of creative writing to the back of her mind. But
it was an itch she felt she needed to scratch.
“I started dabbling with writing a bit more,” says
Katie. “I started doing a bit of journalism on my
evenings and weekends, and then I started playing
BIRMINGHAM AUTHOR
KATIE BISHOP
around with the idea of writing a novel.
Katie’s first attempt, however, proved to be
unsuccessful, when she was unable to capture the
attention of an agent.
“I went into lockdown feeling very dispirited,” says
Katie. “I felt like a failure with this novel, thought
I wasn’t going to write one again. But because of
lockdown I lost a lot of my journalism work, so all
of a sudden I had all of this free time and felt that I
needed to give it another shot.”
Katie had an idea for a new novel bubbling around,
and with time on her hands as the world shut down
in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, she was able
to get stuck into the writing process once again.
“I really liked the idea of writing a ‘one that got
away’ story set in a beautiful, romanticised location,”
she says. “I’m very interested in the idea of nostalgia
and memory, and how that plays with how we view
these big moments in our lives.
“At the same time, it was about three years since
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