Louise Emma Joseph[citation needed] MBE (born 1965), known professionally as Dreda Say Mitchell, is a British novelist, broadcaster, journalist and campaigner.

Mitchell is a best-selling and award-winning crime author, broadcaster, journalist and campaigner who grew up on a housing estate in the East End of London.

She has since written seventeen crime books, many with her writing partner Tony Mason, including their international best-selling psychological thriller, Spare Room.

Mitchell is one of 12 contemporary female writers – also including Val McDermid, Naomi Alderman, Kate Mosse, Elly Griffiths and Ruth Ware – chosen as contributors to a new anthology featuring Agatha Christie's fictional character Miss Marple.

[5] Mitchell was commissioned by the Youth Justice Board to facilitate Write-on, a pilot creative writing and mentoring project in Feltham and Cookham Wood YOIs focusing on children of African-Caribbean, mixed heritage and white working-class backgrounds.