Laura Steven

Laura Steven (also known as Laura Salters, L. K. Steven, or Laura Kirkpatrick) is an English novelist. She won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize for her novel The Exact Opposite of Okay (2018).^[1]

Laura Steven
Steven in 2018
Pen name	Laura Salters Laura Kirkpatrick L. K. Steven
Occupation	Writer, novelist
Alma mater	Northumbria University
Years active	2015–present
Website
www.laura-steven.com

She has used comedy to explore feminist issues in her young adult novels, including an exploration of beauty in Every Exquisite Thing (her re-telling of The Picture of Dorian Gray)^[2] and female rage in The Society for Soulless Girls (her re-telling of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde).^[3]

Early life

Steven grew up in Berwick-upon-Tweed.^[4] She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Journalism in 2013 and a Master of Arts (MA) in Creative Writing, both from Northumbria University.^[5][6]

Career

Steven began her career in magazine journalism. In 2014 at age 23 under the pseudonym Laura Salters, she signed her first book deal with Witness Impulse (a HarperCollins imprint), through which she published her debut novel, a crime thriller titled Run Away, in 2015.^[4][7] This was followed by her second crime novel Perfect Prey in 2016.^[8][9]

Rebranding to Laura Steven, she gained prominence through her young adult Izzy O'Neill duology, the first of which, The Exact Opposite of Okay, was published in 2018 by Electric Monkeys (an Egmont Books imprint).^[10][9] The sequel A Girl Called Shameless followed in 2019.^[11] Under the name Laura Kirkpatrick, she also published the middle-grade fantasy novel And Then I Turned into a Mermaid via Farshore Books (formerly Egmont Books, since acquired by HarperCollins UK).^[12][13] and its 2020 sequel Don't Tell Him I'm a Mermaid.

Also in 2020, Lime Pictures optioned the rights to adapt Steven's next young adult novel Love Hypothesis for television ahead of its release.^[14]

Bibliography

Izzy O'Neill

• The Exact Opposite of Okay. Electric Monkey. 2018. ISBN 978-1405288446.
• A Girl Called Shameless. Electric Monkey. 2019. ISBN 978-1405288620.

And Then I Turned into a Mermaid

• And Then I Turned into a Mermaid. Farshore Books. 2019.
• Don't Tell Him I'm a Mermaid. Farshore Books. 2020.

Stand-alone novels

• Run Away. Witness Impulse. 2015.
• Perfect Prey. Witness Impulse. 2016.
• The Love Hypothesis. Electric Monkey. 2020. ISBN 978-1405296946.
• The Society for Soulless Girls. Electric Monkey. 2022. ISBN 978-1405296939.
• Every Exquisite Thing. Electric Monkey. 2023. ISBN 978-0008627355.