Background
Jo Beverley was born on September 22, 1947 at Morecambe, Lancashire, United Kingdom to the family of hotel owners of Irish descent John and Mildred Dunn.
Jo Beverley was born on September 22, 1947 at Morecambe, Lancashire, United Kingdom to the family of hotel owners of Irish descent John and Mildred Dunn.
Jo Beverley studied at St Mary's Catholic Academy (then Layton Hill Convent) which she graduated in 1966. Later in 1970 Beverley achieved a degree in history at the University of Keele.
After graduation, she quickly attained a position as a youth employment officer at Nottinghamshire County Council. She held this position until 1976 when she moved to Canada together with her husband whose post-doctoral research took place at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Because of the problems with finding a job in Canada Beverley decided to turn to creative writing to which she had interest.
An important point in Beverley's writing career was when in Montreal she attended a talk on "The state of romance in fiction" by Janet Adams, at Beaconsfield Library on 23 May 1984 who was the executive advisor of the Writers' Association for Romance and Mainstream. The latter was strongly impressed by Beverley's works and proposed being her agent.
Later in 1984 Beverley's family relocated to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, where she became a founding member of the Ottawa Romance Writers' Association (ORWA). This organization became her "nurturing community" for the next 12 years. During that period she added science fiction to her list of genres. She also became a Canadian with dual citizenship. In 1988 Beverley sold her first romance novel. She continued writing until her death from cancer in 2016 when together with her husband she returned to the United Kingdom for some time.
Jo Beverley is a well-known and award-winning author of popular romance novels. Beverley is a four-time RITA Award winner and in recognition of her contribution to the genre, she was elected a member of the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. She appeared on the New York Times bestseller list as a contributor to the collection Married at Midnight.
(A thrilling new historical romance from the New York Time...)
2010(The New York Times bestselling author brings back the mos...)
2005(He had never intended to marry, but at the age of sevente...)
2009(Two of the strongest wills in England clash when Lord Rot...)
2000Jo Beverley attended girls Catholic High School.
Beverley was rather concerned about parenting and when she stayed without a job she was participating in the woman-centred childbirth movement.
Quotations:
"Never having read a romance novel doesn't stop people assuming they know everything about them, and the errors are amusing. Some people think they are nothing but sex scenes, quite possibly rapes. Others think they're candy floss fiction that stops at a blushing, hesitant kiss."
''A good romance novel is like real chocolate - little bit sweet, a little bit dark, rich, sensuous, and completely delicious, and we are all very fortunate, blessed, really, to be readers, to be able to enjoy them."
"It's a shame, however, that so many people in the media and academia seem to make it their crusade to make these readers feel ashamed of enjoying their literary dessert."
Mary Josephine née Dunn married Kenneth Beverley, whom she met at Keele, on June 24, 1971. They had two sons Jonathan and Philip.
