Katharine Quarmby

Katharine Quarmby is an author and journalist. She is a Royal Literary Fellow at the London School of Economics and Contributor at Mosaic Science magazine. Her latest non-fiction book, Hear My Cry, co-written with the 'honour violence' survivor, Diana Kader, was published in 2015, by Hachette Poland. No Place to Call Home, in which she investigated the relationship between Britain's settled people and Roma, Romanies and Travellers, asking why it is often so troubled - and what can be done to heal the divide, was published by Oneworld in August 2013, and shortlisted for the Bread and Roses award. Katharine's first Kindle Single on her search for her Iranian birth father, and the ins and outs of adoption across the racial divide, Blood and Water, was also published in 2013. In 2014 she published, with Newsweek Insights, Romani Pilgrims, an e-book about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller evangelical Christians. She also published Aftermath, as a Kindle Single, a short story about the Rwandan genocide, with much of the proceeds going to survivor charities, as well as a Thistle Single short story about her adoptive great-grandfather's alleged involvement in the plot to assassinate Arch Duke Ferdinand, before the outbreak of the First World War. She has spent most of her working life as a journalist and has made many films for the BBC, as well as working as a correspondent for The Economist, contributing to British broadsheets, including the Guardian, Sunday Times and the Telegraph. She also freelances regularly for other papers, including a stint providing roving political analysis for The Economist, where she has worked as a Britain correspondent, during the 2010 general election.In 2007 Katharine started to investigate a number of violent killings of disabled men and women across the UK. As news editor of the disability magazine, Disability Now, she was able to put together the first national dossier of such crimes that year, following it up with an investigative report on disability hate crimes, Getting Away with Murder, for the charity Scope and the UK's Disabled People's Council, in 2008.Her first book for adults, Scapegoat: why we are failing disabled people (Portobello Press, 2011), won a prestigious international award, the Ability Media Literature award, in 2011. In 2012 Katharine was shortlisted for the Paul Foot award for campaigning journalism, by the Guardian and Private Eye magazine, for her five years of campaigning against disability hate. Katharine and her fellow volunteer co-ordinators of the Disability Hate Crime Network, were honoured with Radar's Human Rights People of the Year award, for their work on disability hate crime in 2010.