Tori Beat Author

Tori Beat is an advocate for working class writers and working class stories. Tori a former lawyer turned writer from Derbyshire, where she lives with her husband and two young children. Tori rediscovered her love of writing after leaving her career in law to study an Arts & Humanities degree, which led her to submit her first novel, Class of '99, to the Watson Little x Indie Novella Prize in 2023. Through her writing, Tori explores the taboo surrounding mental health, inspired by her own experience of obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as issues of social and gender inequality and the impact and complexity of human relationships.

Class of '99 is described as one of the quiet, working class stories which often get overlooked. Paul, a secondary school teacher in Sheffield in the late '90s, faces his own crises with mental illness at a time when men's mental health was hardly spoken about. Tori Beat shines a light on both mental health and class stigma in this poignant debut novel.