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‘Libraries protected me at my most vulnerable’: Kerry Hudson on why libraries can’t be lost

Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns

Lowborn

A powerful, personal, agenda-changing work of non-fiction on poverty in Britain from acclaimed novelist, activist and columnist Kerry Hudson

I loved Lowborn... A powerful exploration of Hudson's working-class childhood and its legacy

Totally engrossing and deliciously feisty...It really brings home how under-represented working-class lives and impoverished childhoods have been in our literary culture

Hudson's resilience, grace and humility is staggering. She's an absolute inspiration

Kerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes

Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read

Compelling, fascinating and well-written, undeniably grim but peppered with humour and tenderness...Hudson demonstrates that only by lifting whole communities out of poverty...can we hope to avoid consigning children and young people like her - vulnerable and blameless - to the worst of lives

Lowborn is in part an indictment of a country that claims to still have a functioning welfare state... Most of all, it is a moving portrait of the survival and eventual flourishing of a remarkable spirit

I've been in thrall to the words of Kerry Hudson since reading the very first sentence of her spectacularly good debut novel. I'm so glad she is writing Lowborn. It's an important book that needs to exist and she is exactly the right person to write it. The hideous divisiveness that the horror that is Brexit has both revealed and fuelled, only makes this book more necessary

Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of THE LAST ACT OF LOVE

Elegant, compassionate and powerful... tells the hidden story of what it means to be poor in Britain today

Lowborn is an insider's view of the complexities of modern-day poverty, written with humour and compassion, but without judgement. It should be required reading for anyone who unknowingly believes poverty is a personal choice and that if you work hard enough you'll avoid its fate... a fearless writer, an inspiring woman

One of the most important books of the year

Beautifully written but with emotional hand grenades detonating on almost every page...a breathtaking odyssey

Where there are few working-class stories, there are fewer still from working-class women. Lowborn stands out as rare, as well as compassionately and skilfully told… Some books help us understand the world around us. Others do that, and make us feel less alone in it, too. Lowborn is one such book, holding out a hand of friendship to anyone who might pick it up and find something forgotten or familiar among its pages

I wish I’d had access to such honest and relatable work as Hudson’s when I was younger. She proves that successful women can have a working-class story

Hudson has written a moving and readable account of growing up in the poorest section of society. Her book is also a meditation on social mobility… Hudson’s life is proof that a person can, against the odds, make a success of themselves. In Lowborn, she shows us very clearly why so many do not

Lowborn is the opposite of a misery memoir. The chapters alternate between Hudson's raw memories and accounts of her present-day attempts to confront them. There's warmth and courage as well as pain and ultimately triumph here

Paints a near-dystopian portrait of Brexit-age Britain… Lowborn is a powerful testimonial… Here’s hoping it gives others the courage to tell their version of this story, at high volume

A shocking reminder of the abuse and abbreviated childhoods that many suffer in Britain

What does it mean to be poor in Britain today? Hudson, now a successful author, goes back to where she grew up and examines how her childhood in poverty shaped her. An honest memoir that touches on the author's struggle to reconcile the two very different worlds she belongs to

Kerry Hudson takes us to the places we’d rather not think about – literally and emotionally. She challenges us to think anew about poverty in the here and now using her own experiences but also looking past it and refusing to look away or offer lazy solutions. Her writing is as urgent as her cause and I wish there had been a Kerry Hudson to light the way for me

Damian Barr, author of MAGGIE & ME and YOU WILL BE SAFE HERE

If there were any justice in the world, there would be a copy of Hudson's powerful examination of her impoverished upbringing and why it continues to resonate under every politician's Christmas tree

I cannot imagine a more important or beautifully written book in 2019

Christie Watson, author of The Language of Kindness

One of the most important books of the year

An exploration of what being working class in Britain really means – and a moving portrait of personal survival

In a country bruised by years of austerity, writers are still exploring class and inequality. Kerry Hudson’s memoir Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns…arrives with a sense of urgency

Fragile, combative… A road trip around places she grew up in, it lifts the lid on the pressures of poverty

As food banks proliferate and funded support shrinks, Hudson’s memoir draws our attention to all of the stories that slip through the cracks in a thoroughly personal and captivating way

There are few writers who use their work to shine a light on working class lives, and fewer still who use their success, as Kerry herself said recently in the Guardian, “to send the elevator back down” to help those waiting in the basement to make their way up. Kerry Hudson is one of those writers who stands out for her empathy and passion and her tireless championing of the excluded

Kerry's Lowborn columns are amongst the things of which I am most proud on The Pool. (And that's saying something.) For a long time we had agonised about how to tackle the ever-more-critical issues of class and poverty in this country. Kerry's columns strike the perfect note between activist and emotional, personal and political, memoir and manifesto

The novelist looks back at her impoverished childhood, and travels around Britain asking what being poor means today

Be it fiction, memoir or journalism Kerry Hudson gives a voice to the working classes that is heartfelt, thought-provoking, wryly funny and honest. Because she’s lived and breathed it.

It’s not just Kerry Hudson’s writing that is vibrant, authentic and true, it’s the person herself, it’s where the writing comes from; a wise and generous heart

Her words shine a light on what it really means to live in poverty today. You may not want to hear it, but you won't be able to switch off

The award-winning novelist’s powerful memoir is both a devastating account of how growing up in poverty can affect every aspect of your life and an important look at how we continue to overlook and ignore those we consider "lowborn"

Kerry Hudson was a novelist before turning to non-fiction and it really shows. Lowborn is a story of one of the poor, working-class families who make up most of the UK yet never get a voice. The writing is never sentimental; there is much sadness here but also love and pride and humour.

Lowborn bears witness to a society that Hudson says is structurally and systematically marginalising the poor. As a first-hand account of communities struggling to stay on their feet, it makes a moving, revealing read

Beautifully written… [Lowborn is] an unflinching look back at an upbringing filled with poverty, violence and the judgement of others, and an important call to arms about the way in which we live now, which asks us to consider what being poor really feels like

A searing memoir which lays bare the dehumanising effects of poverty… But it is also a story about resilience… Don’t look away, read this book

This memoir is a vivid account of growing up in poverty… and the changes needed

A vivid, highly personal memoir set against the backdrop of a still broken welfare system… a powerful book… Lowborn is…about the masks that working-class people are forced to wear as the move among people who, even well meaningly, deny and diminish their experiences

This extraordinary account of growing up in poverty in ’80s Scotland is as heartbreaking as it is inspiring

It's voices like Kerry Hudson's that we need to hear more from, people who can really write and who have something to say, something lived, something with heart, redemption and epiphany. Voices with depth and intelligence and nuanced thinking who can tell the rest of us, whether through fiction or memoir, this happened, it happened to me, it isn't right, it shouldn't have happened then and it shouldn't be happening now

The result? Lowborn is an incredibly vulnerable yet powerful book. Raw and tough, but full of hope, it's gripping from start to finish

[Lowborn] provides a revelatory insight into her [Hudson’s] past and into poverty in Britain today

An indelible, clear-eyed account of just how corrosive true poverty can be… [an] important book… a remarkable story, and a powerful, heartfelt call to action

A frank, personal story of Britain’s impoverished hidden millions

This book inspired me… [it] made me want to get up, fight back and claim what I want from life. Everyone should read this book

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award and was shortlisted for an array of prizes including the Guardian First Book Award and the Sky Arts Award. Thirst, her second novel, won the prestigious Prix Femina étranger. Lowborn, her highly acclaimed first work of non-fiction, was a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Guardian and Spectator Book of the Year and Stylist Book of the Decade. It is followed by Newborn. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.

A powerful, personal agenda-changing exploration of poverty in today's Britain. 
 
'Totally engrossing and deliciously feisty' Bernardine Evaristo 
 
'Staggering... An absolute inspiration' Douglas Stewart, Herald 
 
'When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, can you ever escape that sense of being 'lowborn' no matter how far you've come?' 
 
Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma. 
 
Twenty years later, Kerry's life is unrecognisable. She's a prizewinning novelist who has travelled the world. She has a secure home, a loving partner and access to art, music, film and books. But she often finds herself looking over her shoulder, caught somehow between two worlds. 
 
Lowborn is Kerry's exploration of where she came from. She revisits the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed. 
 
'One of the most important books of the year' Guardian

Thirst

An unconventional, will-they-won’t-they love story, that takes us from London to Siberia, and from hope to heartbreak, and back again.

Accomplished…Beautiful…Heart-wrenching

A fizzing, breathless love story from a terrifically talented storyteller

A tender, off-kilter love story… the novel paints a vivid picture of two very different kinds of misfit, falling in love over one dusty, teeming London summer

Hudson captures the bustle of life in Hackney and Russia with energy and a sharp eye for detail… [Her characters] have love, guts, humour and conscience. This is Love on the Dole 21st-century style

Tremendously affecting... impressively unostentatious in its instinct for a common story within a city of millions that never gets heard

An unusual love story... a refreshing change from the plethora of middle-class novel fare that simply holds a mirror to the majority of readers

A brilliant, enthralling saga, Thirst presents with such uncommon verisimilitude that scarcely a syllable appears contrived

Kerry Hudson has consolidated her position with this second novel as a writer who is prepared to face the injustices and the grimness of life, and tell of lives usually ignored... Thirst is hardly an easy summer read... but it is probably an essential one

A classy will-they won't-they romance with a difference... Sheer escapism from start to finish

Both funny and touching... Hudson's debut was highly praised and this is a terrific follow-up

There is a love story at the hear tof this one which thankfully isn't saccharine or sugar coated but real and bumpy and awkward and wonderful... her characters are real, funny and flawed...  Kerry is rather a genius

It’s a brave book, easily consumed in a day, and I’m in awe of Hudson’s expert demolition of the conventions of the genre

Thirst is shot through with a vein of optimism, and never lets go of its belief in the power of love, compassion and forgiveness

Unflinching yet tender-hearted study of two lowly characters teetering on the brink

From the prize-winning author of Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma 
 
Winner of the Prix Femina Etranger 
 
 
London, in the frayed heat of summer. Alena is shoplifting shoes when Dave catches her in the act and so begins an unlikely relationship between two people with little in common and everything to lose. 
 
 
But the past is a dark place. And both of them have secrets they’ve no idea how to live with – or leave behind. Yet still they find themselves fighting with all they’ve got for a future together. But is love enough? 
 
 
'Accomplished... Beautiful... Heart-wrenching' Independent on Sunday 
 
Shortlisted for the Prix Femina Prize

Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma

Winner of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award 2013 and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2012, Tony Hogan introduces an irresistible new Scottish voice…

There's little doubt that this young writer is going to be a star... In the course of this picaresque and haunting tale, Hudson achieves something rare and remarkable. While comparison will inevitably be made between her work and that of Irvine Welsh or Alan Warner, she is wholly individual

Kerry Hudson’s fine, eloquent debut novel traces the peripatetic childhood of Janie Ryan...her tale is full of warmth and bittersweet humour

Real and heartfelt... Hudson avoids the usual sentimental clichés and gives us, without a shred of hipster cynicism, the hope and tough warmth for which she has such a sharp eye

A gritty, tough, sweet , sad, funny story of urban survival. Recommended

A sympathetic coming-of-age tale and a valuable counterpoint to widespread social attitudes to women in poverty

Concurrently very funny and incredibly sad. The writing sizzles, and the words jump off the page as Hudson describes a world of fags, booze, bingo and worse. We watch our heroine Janie Ryan struggle through it all with humour and a will to survive. I was cheering her on all the way, and I'm sure you will, too

Told with such an honest and engaging voice that you can’t help but turn the page

This is a remarkable debut novel of love and loyalty, of fierce passion and scabrous wit, full of characters whose broad vernacular is direct and expressive. This is about a culture with just as much right to be called British as that of middle-class suburbia

Refreshing originality… Hudson’s achievement is the creation of a strong, working-class, female voice in her protagonist – filling a hole in contemporary literature

Hudson’s ear for language…raises this debut novel well above the average

Janie’s irrepressible, childish glee and the sly humour into which it evolves give the novel a wry self-awareness that is both refreshing and endearing

A gripping, often hilarious tale of growing up in the slums of Aberdeen. Hard to put down owing to the power of the narrative, its DNA is part Roddy Doyle/part Irvine Welsh

Winner of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award 2013, Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Sky Arts Awards, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year, the Portsmouth First Fiction Award, the Green Carnation Prize and the Polari Prize 
 
‘More than just one of the best debuts of the year; one of the best books of the year. It should do for Aberdeen what Trainspotting did for Edinburgh’ Louise Welsh, Herald 
 
When Janie Ryan is born, she is destined to be the latest in a long line of Aberdeen fishwives. 
 
Ahead of her lies a life filled with feckless men, filthy council flats and bread &amp; marge sandwiches. 
 
But Janie isn’t like the rest of them. She wants a different life. 
 
And Janie, born and bred for combat, is ready to fight for it.

Kerry Hudson

I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it

Giovanna Fletcher, Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast

Hudson nails many parents' innermost thoughts while asking if she can really give her son a different life

An absorbing read, written in Hudson's fluent, companionable prose

Her memoirs are a rallying cry to those still stuck in the quagmire not to let society&rsquo;s low expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy

It was always going to be difficult to follow Lowborn, but Kerry Hudson is Kerry Hudson and she has done it -- cleverly, honestly, brilliantly

Filled with colour: food, Prague, illness, love, the challenges of having a baby in a foreign country and making your own story

Running Away, Breaking with the Past, Building a New Family

‘I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it’ Giovanna Fletcher, Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast 
 
The new memoir from Kerry Hudson about her struggle to build a safe, loving home for her baby – the very opposite of the home she grew up in... 
 
‘Absorbing’ Irish Times 
‘Filled with colour’ Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun 
‘A rallying cry’ Herald 
 
How do you build a family without a blueprint to work from? 
 
Kerry Hudson grew up in poverty. Always on the move, shuttled between the care system and her chaotic mother, she left school at 15 without qualifications. Now a prize-winning writer, she looks back and asks: how do you create a different life for yourself and your family? 
 
In Newborn we see how Kerry found love, what it took to decide to start a family of her own and how fragile every step of the journey towards parenthood was. All along the way, she faces obstacles that would test the strongest foundations, from struggles with fertility to being locked down in a Prague maternity hospital to a marriage in crisis. But over and over again, her love, hope, fight – and determination to break patterns and give her son a different life – win through and light her path. 
 
PRAISE FOR KERRY HUDSON: 
 
‘It’s not just Kerry Hudson’s writing that is vibrant, authentic and true, it’s the person herself, it’s where the writing comes from; a wise and generous heart’ KIT DE WAAL 
 
'Hudson’s resilience, grace and humility are staggering. She’s an absolute inspiration’ DOUGLAS STUART 
 
‘Kerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes’ PHILIPPA PERRY

Kerry Hudson

Praise for Newborn

I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it

Hudson nails many parents' innermost thoughts while asking if she can really give her son a different life

An absorbing read, written in Hudson's fluent, companionable prose

I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it

Hudson nails many parents' innermost thoughts while asking if she can really give her son a different life

An absorbing read, written in Hudson's fluent, companionable prose

I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it

Hudson nails many parents' innermost thoughts while asking if she can really give her son a different life

An absorbing read, written in Hudson's fluent, companionable prose

Books by Kerry Hudson

Articles featuring Kerry Hudson

Five ways to show your local library some love

‘Libraries protected me at my most vulnerable’: Kerry Hudson on why libraries can’t be lost

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