Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson

Lowborn is her first work of non-fiction. Thirst, her second novel, won the prestigious Prix Femina Etranger.

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 Awards. With Lowborn Kerry is looking to break through the barriers, through the naivety and denial that have kept the conversation of poverty dialled down, with an aim to raise awareness through the roof and make a change. Lowborn is Kerry’s exploration of where she came from, revisiting the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed. The difference is that Kerry saw an opportunity for a different existence and ran for it. All of the people Kerry grew up with were experiencing exactly the same as she was. Whilst many people would like to think that Kerry was an exception – that she was unlucky, or a one-in-a-million case.

Kerry scores 8 out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended 9 primary schools and 5 secondary schools, living in B&Bs and council flats. Kerry Hudson grew up in all-encompassing, grinding poverty. Lowborn is a powerful, personal, agenda-changing work of non-fiction on poverty in Britain – a book like nothing that’s been written before, and a book that we all need to pay attention to. Kerry Hudson discusses her book Lowborn with James Bloodworth.

Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson