Penny Pepper

A versatile, witty and candid writer, Penny Pepper’s memoir, First in the World Somewhere was published September 2017. It charts an extraordinary life in the indie-post punk music scene from Thatcher’s brutal ’80s to Blair’s empty Brit Pop ’90s. As a poet, she performs across the UK and once further afield, in New York.

Her first poetry collection, Come Home Alive, is published by Burning Eye Books. In September 2014 her one-woman spoken word show, Lost in Spaces, premiered at Soho Theatre before touring the UK. She wrote the taboo-breaking book Desires Reborn in 2012 and in 2013 she won a Creative Futures Literary Award. She also won an Erotic Oscar in 1999, almost met Jeremy Paxman while on Channel 4’s Brexit Debate and once had a Christmas card from Morrissey. She writes regularly for the Guardian and guests on BBC TV & Radio.

“A force of nature and a voice like no other… brilliantly funny, brilliantly frank and brilliantly political” – Liz Carr, actor, comedian, activist.

“Penny Pepper’s work is a virtuoso display of invention, wit and courage. It makes us see the world differently” – Margaret Drabble, novelist, biographer, critic.