Keren David

Keren David is an English award-winning author for young adults and the managing editor of the Jewish Chronicle.

Keren David grew up in a small town in Hertfordshire. She attended Bishop's Hatfield Girls' School. Keren started in journalism as a teenage messenger girl, spending a year running errands and making coffee before turning down a place at university to become an apprentice reporter.

Keren David worked as a news reporter and feature writer on local and national papers in London and Glasgow and taught a course in handling media attention for residents of Lockerbie.

She worked as an assistant news editor at The Independent and as a commissioning editor on the paper’s Comment Pages. In 1999, Keren David moved to Amsterdam, where she studied art history and worked as Editor in Chief for photojournalism agency The Cover Story.

In 2007, Keren returned to north London with her husband and two children. She wrote her compelling debut YA novel, When I Was Joe, in five months while taking a course in Writing for Children at City University.

When I Was Joe won five regional awards, was voted for by teenage readers, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and the William Morris award, was shortlisted for the Branford Boase award, the UKLA award, and was highly commended for the Teenage Booktrust Prize. It was listed as a White Raven 2011 (awarded by the International Youth Library to books that deserve worldwide attention).

When I Was Joe is the first in a trilogy, along with Almost True and Another Life.

Her standalone novel Lia’s Guide to Winning the Lottery was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and is being developed into a musical with Perfect Pitch. Salvage, Keren’s third standalone, was shortlisted for the 2015 Bookseller YA Book Prize, The Romantic Novel of the Year award, was picked as one of the Telegraph’s 40 best YA books of 2014, and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal.

In France, as Te Retrouver (Hugo et Cie) it was nominated for the Les Incorruptibles prize.

This is Not a Love Story (2015) was long-listed for the UKLA award and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Cuckoo (2016) was nominated for the 2017 Carnegie Medal.

She has since published The Liar’s Handbook (2017), Stranger (2018), True Sisters (2018), The Disconnect (2019), and What We’re Scared Of (2021). Her most recent work is Say No to the Dress (2022).

Keren David is now a Visiting Lecturer at City, on the MA Creative Writing and Publishing course. She is also a Features Editor at the Jewish Chronicle.

Keren David lives in London.

Photo credit © Faye Thomas