Donna Ashworth Popular Books

Donna Ashworth Biography & Facts

Donna Ashworth is a Sunday Times best-selling Scottish poet. She came to prominence in 2020 when her poetry about the UK's Covid lockdown was read by in a viral video to raise money for the NHS. She has subsequently been credited with helping poetry sales reach record levels in the UK. Career During the UK's Covid first lockdown in 2020, Ashworth started posting her poetry to a feminist blog she had run since 2017. She had previously primarily only posted inspirational quotes from other people. Her poem about this period, "History Will Remember When The World Stopped", became popular online, including being read in an video by celebrities to raise money for the NHS. This prompted her to self-publish a pamphlet of lockdown poems on Amazon. Her second self-published volume, To The Women, sold 100,000 copies, leading her to sign with Bonnier in 2021. Ashworth finished 2023 with three titles in the top five of the poetry book chart, and a further two in the top twenty, having sold 70,000 hardbacks that year. In March 2024, Ashworth signed a five book deal with Scottish independent publishing house Black & White. As of March 2024, Ashworth's Wild Hope had been in the Sunday Times best-seller chart for eleven weeks. It is credited with being partially responsible for 2023 being the best year for British poetry sales since records began. Style Ashworth has been described as an Instagram poet, with The Observer calling her "a cheerleader of Instapoetry". The Telegraph said the uplifting themes of her poetry "work like motivational Post-It notes". Ashworth herself has described her work as "self help in poetry" and admits "a lot of what I say is cheesy", while fans have said her writing is "like a warm hug". The Economist described her work as feeling "like ChatGPT has been asked to produce inspirational fridge magnets". Personal life Ashworth was born in a small village near Stirling, Scotland. She attended Glasgow University, studying film, theatre studies and Italian. She left university due to anxiety, partly attributed to the death by suicide of a fellow student and the recent murder of James Bulger. The Telegraph quotes her as saying "I often respond to [other people’s tragedies] by catastrophising them. So I left all my stuff in the middle of the night and went back home to my mum". She had previously struggled with anorexia in her teens. She attempted to enter the music industry, singing on cruise ships and moving to Manchester for a management contract. When she did not secure a record contract, she transitioned to magazine journalism. She is married to Robert Ashworth, former producer of soap opera Coronation Street, with whom she has two sons. He was awarded damages in the Daily Mirror phone hacking case, which he blamed for ruining his media career and his marriage to actress Tracy Shaw. References. Discover the Donna Ashworth popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Donna Ashworth books.