Every narrative has power and yours deserves to be heard.

Join bestselling author Kerry Hudson and publisher and producer Sam Ruddock to explore how you can bring you past to life.

Whatever your life story, regardless of whether you’ve ever seen it in books before, we will take your through exercises and share experience and expertise to help you unlock the power of writing your story.

Workshop length: 90 minutes.
Capacity: Max 12 People
Contact: email Ros Green for more information and to book

Produced by Story Machine Productions
Presented in association with Arts Council England

About ‘Lowborn’ and Kerry Hudson

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

‘Kerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes…’ Philippa Perry, bestselling author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read

‘Compelling, fascinating and well-written, undeniably grim but peppered with humour and tenderness’ Kit de Waal