Adelle Stripe is an author and journalist who was born in York, UK, in 1976. Her writing is rooted in the nonfiction novel form and explores working-class culture, untold histories of Northern England, popular music, and smalltown life.

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Base Notes, her most recent work, is a poetic, poignant and bleakly comic chronicle of her formative years growing up in a northern brewery town during the late 20th century. The Observer described it as 'a small, bleak masterpiece.' It was a Telegraph book of the year.

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Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family and the Miracle of Failure was a Sunday Times bestseller. Co-written with lead singer Lias Saoudi, the biography charts the rise, fall and eventual salvage of one of the UK’s most controversial bands. It was shortlisted for the Penderyn Music Book Prize in 2022, recognising it as a standout work in the realm of music writing.

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First published in 2017, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile was her fictionalised biography of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, a writer most well known for her play Rita, Sue and Bob Too. Described by David Peace as ‘one of the great debut novels of the century', it was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Portico Prize for Literature. A stage adaptation by Lisa Holdsworth received widespread critical acclaim. Recently reissued in the UK by Virago, the book will be published in France in 2026 as Dents noires et sourire radieux by Les éditions du typhon, translated by Claire Charrier. 

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Three of Stripe's poetry chapbooks were published in limited edition, hand printed form by Blackheath Books between 2007-2012. The Humber Star - a lament inspired by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill and based on the experiences of her seafaring ancestors in Hessle Road - was performed live at John Grant's North Atlantic Flux for Hull City of Culture. 

 

As a journalist, Stripe has contributed to The Quietus, Yorkshire Post, TLS, Crack Magazine, Record Collector, Sunday Times, Tribune and New Statesman. She has received writing commissions from the British Film Institute, Manchester Literature Festival, Leeds West Indian Carnival, Heavenly Records and Domino Recording Company. In 2023, she recorded a New Postscripts audio essay based on J.B. Priestley’s classic wartime broadcasts as part of the BBC's centenary celebrations.

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Stripe holds a PhD by Research in Modern British History and Creative Writing and was a Burgess Fellow at the University of Manchester's Centre for New Writing in 2023. She is an editorial board member at British Pop Archive Books and a trustee at Mutton Fist Press, a small but perfectly formed printmaking charity based at the Bomb Factory, London. 

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She lives in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, and is currently writing her second novel, Potter's End.