Rowan Dorothy Pelling is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and broadcaster

Presenter

A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...

, who first achieved note as the editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 (or "editrice", to use her term) of a monthly literary/erotic magazine, entitled the Erotic Review

Erotic Review

Erotic Review is a monthly UK-based lifestyle publication. Covering eroticism and sex-related topics, it was first published in 1995 as a print magazine, migrating to an eZine format in June, 2010...

.

She studied English at St Hugh's College, Oxford

St Hugh's College, Oxford

St Hugh's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. It is located on a fourteen and a half acre site on St Margaret's Road, to the North of the city centre. It was founded in 1886 as a women's college, and accepted its first male students in its centenary year in 1986...

, and after graduating worked at the satirical magazine Private Eye

Private Eye

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...

, she then went on to work for GQ magazine where she met her husband Angus Mackinnon. She transformed Jamie Maclean's Erotic Print Society's slim foolscap newsletter into the Erotic Review in 1997, a popular magazine whose circulation peaked at 30,000 plus.

Rowan Pelling has contributed to a variety of newspapers and magazines, including regular columns for the Independent on Sunday, The Mail on Sunday

The Mail on Sunday

The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1982 by Lord Rothermere, it became Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper following the closing of The News of the World in July 2011...

, GQ and Jack. She was a judge of the 2004 Man Booker Prize

Man Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

. She is now a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, is working on her first novel, and is the mother of two sons. She lives in Cambridge.