Jojo Moyes

Pauline Sara Jo Moyes (born 4 August 1969), known professionally as Jojo Moyes, is an English journalist and, since 2002, a romance novelist and screenwriter. She is one of only a few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association and has been translated into twenty-eight languages.[1]

Jojo Moyes
Born (1969-08-04) 4 August 1969
Maidstone, Kent, England
LanguageEnglish
Period1993–present
GenreRomance
SpouseCharles (Maxwell) Arthur
Children3
Website
www.jojomoyes.com

Life and early career

Pauline Sara-Jo Moyes was born on 4 August 1969[2] in Maidstone,[3] England.[4] Before attending university, Moyes held several jobs: she was a typist at NatWest typing statements in braille for blind people, a brochure writer for Club 18-30, and a minicab controller for a brief time. While an undergraduate at Royal Holloway, University of London, Moyes worked for the Egham and Staines News.[5] Moyes won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper which allowed her to attend the postgraduate newspaper journalism course at City University in 1992. She subsequently worked for The Independent for the next 10 years (except for one year, when she worked in Hong Kong for the Sunday Morning Post) in various roles, becoming Assistant News Editor in 1998. In 2002 she became the newspaper's Arts and Media Correspondent.[6]

Writing career

Early in her writing career,[7] Moyes wrote three manuscripts that were all initially rejected. With one child, another baby on the way, and a career as a journalist, Moyes committed to herself that if her fourth book was rejected, she would stop her efforts. After submitting the first three chapters of her fourth book to various publishers, six of them began a bidding war for the rights.

Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002, when her first book Sheltering Rain was published. She continues to write articles for The Daily Telegraph.[8]

Moyes' publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, did not take up the 2012 novel Me Before You and Moyes sold it to Penguin. It sold six million copies, went to number one in nine countries, and reinvigorated her back catalogue resulting in three of her novels being on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.[9] Moyes would later write two sequels starring Louisa Clark, the protagonist of Me Before You: After You in 2015 and Still Me in 2018.[10]

In 2013, it was announced that Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter had been hired to write an adaptation of Me Before You.[11]

In 2016 the film adaptation Me Before You was released and the screenplay was written by Moyes.[12]

Moyes now looks back on those first seven novels written prior to Me Before You, and how it was discouraging to have seven novels in the market that were not doing well. After Me Before You took off, Moyes says that "people turned to the backlist" (those first seven books) and began purchasing and reading them as well, giving Moyes a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment.[13]

In 2020, Moyes attended the launch of the Quick Reads which she supported with £120,000 of her own investment where she spoke to Ikon London Magazine about the Quick Reads initiative.[14]

Awards and achievements

Moyes first won the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2004 for Foreign Fruit[15] and again in 2011 for The Last Letter From Your Lover.[16] She is one of few authors to have received this award twice.

Me Before You hit the New York Times bestseller Top Ten chart in 2016[17] and spent 19 weeks on the chart.

Me Before You was nominated for Book of the Year at the UK Galaxy Book Awards.

The Giver of Stars was shortlisted for the 2020 Fiction Book of the Year in the British Book Awards.[18]

Literary influences

As a child, Moyes remembers reading National Velvet[19] by Enid Bagnold and how that book made her feel that, as a child, she could achieve things greater than she thought possible at the time.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson is a book that Moyes cites[7] as one that really changed her feelings about writing as she matured and grew into her career. She cites it as being one of those books that keeps readers invested, and it was one that she said pushed her to become a better, stronger writer.

Moyes cites Nora Ephron's use of wit to display the business of love and being human.[20]

Marian Keyes and Lisa Jewell are two authors whom Moyes cites that are often referred to as "chick-lit" authors, but whose writing is well-refined and goes beyond the "lightweight" implications of being labelled a "romance writer".[1]

Jonathan Tropper is a writer whom Moyes cites as someone she admires hugely, noting that she tries "to read authors who are better than [she is]" because it pushes her to be a better writer.[1]

Jane Austen is an author whom Moyes admires for her ability to write about what truly influences love and what makes a love story realistic (i.e. what pushes them apart, not what brings them together).[1]

Private life

Moyes lives on a farm in Great Sampford, Essex, with her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, and their three children.[21][22] She enjoys riding her ex-racehorse, Brian, as well as tending to the numerous animals on her family's farm,[20] including Nanook, or 'BigDog', a rescued 58 kg female Pyrenean mountain dog.[23]

Bibliography

Novels
  • Sheltering Rain, AKA Return to Ireland (2002) ISBN 0060012897
  • Foreign Fruit, AKA Windfallen (2003) ISBN 0340834145
  • The Peacock Emporium (2004)[24] ISBN 0340752041
  • The Ship of Brides (2005) ISBN 0340830107
  • Silver Bay (2007) ISBN 0340895934
  • Night Music (2008) ISBN 0340895950
  • The Last Letter from Your Lover (2008) ISBN 0670022802
  • The Horse Dancer (2009) ISBN 0340961600
  • Me Before You series:
    1. Me Before You (2012) ISBN 0670026603
    2. After You (2015) ISBN 0698411412
    3. Still Me (2018) ISBN 0399562451
  • The Girl You Left Behind series:
    1. Honeymoon in Paris (2012), novella
    2. The Girl You Left Behind (2012) ISBN 0670026611
  • One Plus One (2014) ISBN 1405909056
  • The Giver of Stars (2019) ISBN 0718183231

Short stories

Collections:

  • Paris for One and Other Stories (2016), collection of 10 short stories and 1 novella: ISBN 0735221073
    "Paris for One", "Between the Tweets", "Love in the Afternoon", "A Bird in the Hand", "Crocodile Shoes", "Holdups", "Honeymoon in Paris" (novella), "Last Year's Coat", "Thirteen Days with John C", "Margot", "The Christmas List"

Adaptations

References
  1. "jojo moyes red chat". Retrieved 15 November 2017.
  2. "Jojo Moyes: Biography". webbiography.com. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  3. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 28 February 2017.
  4. "Jojo Moyes". The Open Library.
  5. "Jojo Moyes". The Telegraph.
  6. "Jojo Moyes". jojomoyes.com. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  7. "Interview with Jojo Moyes". Goodreads. 31 July 2013. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
  8. "Jojo Moyes". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  9. "Moyes interview". Irish Independent.
  10. STILL ME by Jojo Moyes, Penguin Books
  11. "ME BEFORE YOU to Be Adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber". Collider. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  12. "Me Before You (film 2016)". IMDB.
  13. Beckerman, Hannah (21 September 2015). "Jojo Moyes: 'I'd like to be the Puccini of fiction'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
  14. "Jojo Moyes About Backing the Quick Reads". Ikon London Magazine. 21 February 2020. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  15. "Welcome – The Romantic Novelists' Association". rna-uk.org. Archived from the original on 15 November 2017. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  16. "Jojo Moyes". TheBookseller.com. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  17. "Best Sellers - June 26, 2016 - The New York Times". NYTimes.com. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  18. "British Book Awards 2020: Books of the Year shortlists revealed | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 20 March 2020.
  19. "National Velvet". www.GoodReads.com. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  20. BookBrowse. "Jojo Moyes author interview". BookBrowse.com. Retrieved 15 November 2017.
  21. "Curtis Brown". curtisbrown.co.uk. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
  22. "The Open Library".
  23. Moyes, Jojo (25 January 2018). "How a 58kg rescue dog changed my life". The Times. Retrieved 25 January 2018. (subscription required)
  24. Review of The Peacock Emporium at Booklover Book Reviews
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