Laurie Penny

Penny was born in London to two lawyers of Irish, Jewish and Maltese descent,[3] and grew up in Lewes[4] and Brighton.[5] Penny suffered from anorexia as a teenager and was hospitalised with the condition aged 17. They recovered from the illness and wrote about the experience from a feminist perspective in their book Unspeakable Things.[6]

Penny attended the independent school Brighton College before studying English at Wadham College, Oxford.[7]

Penny's blog "Penny Red" was launched in 2007[8] and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for blogging in 2010.[9] Penny went on to become a columnist at The Independent in 2012[10] and then a columnist and contributing editor for the New Statesman.[11] They are a regular contributor to The Guardian.[12]

In April 2011, they presented the Channel 4 Dispatches programme "Cashing in on Degrees".[13] and also appeared on Channel 4's satirical current affairs programme 10 O'Clock Live[14] and on BBC Two's Newsnight.[15]

In 2012, Tatler magazine described Penny as one of the top 100 "people who matter".[16] In October 2012, The Daily Telegraph ranked Penny as the 55th most influential left-winger in Britain, describing them as "without doubt the loudest and most controversial female voice on the radical left",[17] and the knowledge networking company Editorial Intelligence awarded Penny its "Twitter Public Personality" award.[18] In 2015 Penny was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.[19]

Several of Penny's articles have provoked criticism, including a 2014 article for the New Statesman that argued short hair on women was a "political statement"[20] and a 2015 article defending vandalism of the Monument to the Women of World War II.[21]

Penny came out as genderqueer, pansexual and polyamorous in 2015.[26][27] In 2020, Penny stated a preference for the pronouns they/them; they also use she/her pronouns, although they consider them to be "less accurate".[28]

In December 2020 Penny married in Los Angeles, California.[29]

Penny has stated they have complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD)[30] and autism.[31]

• 2010: Orwell Prize for blogging, shortlist[32]
• 2012: Bread and Roses Award, shortlist, Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent[33]
• 2014: Red Women of the Year Award, blogger category, shortlist[34]
• 2015: William Montalbano Nieman Fellow[35]
• 2015: Fellow at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University[36]
• 2017: John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, finalist[37]
• 2018: American Society of Magazine Editors National Magazine Awards, Columns and Commentary category, finalist, for the columns "The Horizon of Desire", "We’re All Mad Here: Weinstein, Women, and the Language of Lunacy", and "The Unforgiving Minute".[38]

• Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (Zero Books, 2011)
• Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent (Pluto Press, 2011)
• Discordia: Six Nights in Crisis Athens (Random House, 2012)
• Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013)
• Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014)
• Everything Belongs to the Future (Tor.com, 2016)
• Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults (Bloomsbury USA, 2017)
• Sexual Revolution : Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2022) ISBN 978-1526602213

Wikiquote has quotations related to Laurie Penny.

• Laurie Penny at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Laurie Penny at IMDb