Introduction
Laurie Penny (born 28 September 1986) is an English feminist columnist and author. She has contributed articles to publications such as The Guardian and the New Statesman, and has written two books on feminism.
Early life and education
Penny was born in London, the daughter of the late lawyer Ray Barnett. She is of part-Irish, Jewish, and Maltese descent and, in personal comment on her website, described herself as an "atheist child of a lapsed Jew and a lapsed Catholic". She grew up in Brighton and Lewes. Penny attended the independent school Brighton College on a scholarship. She has written about her hospitalisation at age 17 for anorexia and subsequent recovery.
Penny studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, graduating in 2008 with a 2:1. Whilst a student, she joined and performed in a burlesque troupe, and appeared in amateur dramatic productions with the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society, of which she was a committee member. She then completed her NCTJ journalism training certificate in London.
Career
Penny's blog, "Penny Red", was launched in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010. She began her career as a staff writer at One in Four magazine and then worked as a reporter and sub-editor for the socialist newspaper Morning Star. She has written columns and features for several publications, and is a columnist for the New Statesman and regular contributor to The Guardian.
In April 2011, Penny presented the Channel 4 Dispatches programme "Cashing In on Degrees", and appeared on the same channel's satirical current affairs programme 10 O'Clock Live and BBC Two's Newsnight.
On 26 March 2012, Penny announced via her Twitter account that she was leaving the New Statesman to take up a full-time post at The Independent newspaper as a reporter and columnist. In October 2012, it was announced that she was leaving The Independent to rejoin the New Statesman (in November) as a columnist and contributing editor.
Penny is the author of Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (Zero Books, 2011) and Penny Red: Notes from a New Age of Dissent (Pluto Press, 2011). In Meat Market she mounts an attack on liberal feminism, which she characterises as embracing the consumer choice offered by capitalism as the path to female emancipation. Penny Red was shortlisted for the inaugural Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing in 2012. Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution was published in July 2014. In the book, Penny reveals she has had sexual relationships with both men and women in the past. Shortly afterwards, Penny stated she was subject to "a stream of vile sexist and anti-Semitic abuse" following the book's publication.
Penny was selected by Truthdig as "Truthdigger of the Week" for the week of 25 November 2011. In 2012, Tatler magazine described her as one of top 100 'people who matter'. In October 2012, The Daily Telegraph ranked Penny as the 55th most influential left-winger in Britain, reporting that she is "without doubt the loudest and most controversial female voice on the radical left." In April 2014, Penny was announced as an International Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
Awards
- 2012: Bread and Roses Award, shortlist, Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent.
- Flood, Alison (6 March 2012). "New prize for radical writing announces shortlist". Retrieved 2 May 2012.