Holly Smale

“Writing can be a solitary path but with Kate I have always felt like I’m on the winning team.”

Holly has always felt different. As a child she was hyperlexic but couldn’t make friends. She was described as a ‘clever little girl’. As a teenager she learnt to mask, but it was exhausting. Emotional and physical meltdowns followed and continued into adulthood. Holly was unable to form longterm relationships and felt she never fitted in.

Then in 2021, at the age of 39, Holly was diagnosed as autistic. Suddenly things started to make sense, including her fictional heroine of the Geek Girl series, Harriet Manners.

Holly was written articles and given interviews about her late autism diagnosis including in The Times Magazine, R4 Woman’s Hour, R2 Jeremy Vine Show, NPR’s Here & Now. She regularly shares, debates and celebrates neuro-diversity on Twitter and Instagram.

Holly is now a bestselling novelist and co-creator of a Netflix TV series. Her first adult novel Cassandra In Reverse was selected as a Reese Book Club pick and a Radio 2 Book Club pick and her hit teen series Geek Girl has sold more than 3.4 million copies worldwide in 29 languages, and is a Netflix TV series co-created, -scripted and -exec produced by Holly herself.

HOLLY’S BOOKS

Cassandra in Reverse, Penguin/Mira, 2023; Geek Girl (10th Anniversary Edn), HarperCollins, 2023; Love Me Not (The Valentines), HarperCollins, 2021; Far From Perfect (The Valentines), HarperCollins, 2020; Happy Girl Lucky (The Valentines), HarperCollins, 2019; Forever Geek (Geek Girl 6), HarperCollins, 2017; Sunny Side Up (A Geek Girl Special), HarperCollins, 2016; Head Over Heels (Geek Girl 5), HarperCollins, 2016; All Wrapped Up (A Geek Girl Special), HarperCollins, 2015; All that Glitters (Geek Girl 4), HarperCollins, 2015; Geek Drama (for World Book Day), HarperCollins 2015; Picture Perfect (Geek Girl 3), HarperCollins, 2014; Model Misfit (Geek Girl 2), HarperCollins, 2013; Geek Girl, HarperCollins, 2013.

REVIEWERS

“Witty, touching and totally absorbing.”

Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project

“Smart and funny.”

The Times

“Utterly brilliant!”

Zoe Ball

Latest Book

THE WRITER WHO MOST INSPIRED HOLLY

My love of stories was cemented at a very early age by Enid Blyton: she convinced me of the power of books, of escape, of imagination, and I knew immediately that I wanted to spend my life trying to create a little of that magic too.

HOW HOLLY BECAME KATE’S CLIENT

For Kate, I thank the alphabet. I was twenty-five, unemployed and clueless. I’d spent years writing but I was terrified and unsure. I had two manuscripts, but couldn’t find the courage to send either of them out.

So I turned it into a game. I got The Writers and Artists Yearbook and decided to “race” my manuscripts against each other: sending one from A to Z through the list of agents and the other from Z to A.

Kate worked for Aitken Alexander; my journey stopped at A.

HOLLY ABOUT KATE

It was Kate who turned me from a hopeful, idiotic upstart into a real writer. She believed in me and encouraged me to start seeing writing as a career I might genuinely have a shot at.

In the many years of working with Kate, her passion, loyalty and commitment have never flickered. Writing can be a solitary path but with Kate I have always felt like I’m on the winning team.

KATE ABOUT HOLLY

When I read the opening of Holly’s first book I had to represent her. Her brilliance is to combine laugh-out-loud wit and warmth with terrific stories, important themes and amazing characters; characters you want to be, or to love, or to love to hate, or to be related to. Holly also inspires women and girls to dream, to make great choices, and to laugh, love and maybe mess-up along the way. I’m so proud to represent Holly and to know her.