A UK journalism trainer had become a best-selling author across the Atlantic.

Michelle Rawlins, who lectures at the University of Sheffield, has risen to the top of the Amazon best-seller charts in the United States.

Michelle, pictured, released ‘The Steel Girls’, the first of a fiction series based around real-life women who worked in the Sheffield steel industry during the Second World War, last year.

Now the first and second books in the series have become hits in America.

Speaking to Sheffield news website Shef News, Michelle said: “I am utterly delighted. It was such a lovely surprise to see both The Steel Girls books doing so well on the US Amazon Kindle charts. To think readers in America are reading the book is a wonderful feeling.

“Hearing what this remarkable generation went through, the sacrifices they made and their fierce determination was utterly humbling. I felt they deserved their place in the history books.

“I first came up with the idea for Women Of Steel after looking for a book on the women who worked in the Sheffield steel industry during World War Two, but there was nothing out there on a national scale.

“I spoke to my literary agent, who, like myself, thought these women’s stories were worthy of a book, so I began my research. I’ve always loved telling women’s stories and did a history degree, so I felt like the two things I really enjoy came together.”

Michelle began her career as a features writer for Caters News Agency in Birmingham in 1996, moving to Ross Parry Agency in Leeds the following year.

She has been freelance since 1998 and began teaching at the University of Sheffield in 2020.