Laurie Penny

Her seventh book, Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017) was longlisted for the 2018 Orwell Prize.

In May 2015, Penny courted controversy by claiming that she did not "have a problem" with a war memorial being vandalised with graffiti stating: "Fuck Tory scum". In the face of criticism, she responded: "No, what's disgusting is that some people are more worried about a war memorial than the destruction of the welfare state".

In June 2015, she was banned from social media site Facebook for using a pseudonymous alias. In August 2015, she endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.

In January 2014, Penny wrote an article for the New Statesman arguing that short hair on women was a "political statement" which "the patriarchy fears". Her comments led to her being attacked by on social media for "dismissing" women with long hair, which resulted in Penny suffering from a panic attack.

Her 2013 work Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet (Bloomsbury, 2013) contemplates online harassment and its motivations. Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution was published in July 2014. Shortly afterwards, Penny stated she had been subjected to "a stream of vile sexist and anti-Semitic abuse" following the book's publication. Everything Belongs to the Future (St. Martins Press-3PL, 2016) followed in 2016.

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.

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", and the knowledge networking company Editorial Intelligence gave her its "Twitter Public Personality" award. In April 2014, she was announced as an International Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in the United States.

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.

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 criticises liberal feminism as embracing the consumer choice offered by capitalism as the path to female emancipation. Penny Red was shortlisted for the first Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing in 2012 after the publication of Discordia: Six Nights in Crisis Athens (Random House, 2012).

Following secondary school she studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, graduating in 2008 with a 2:1. Whilst a student, she performed amateur drama in the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society, of which she was a committee member, and she was a burlesque. She then completed her NCTJ journalism training certificate in London.

Penny's blog "Penny Red" was launched in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for blogging 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 and contributing editor for the New Statesman and regular contributor to The Guardian.

Laurie Penny (born 28 September 1986) is an English journalist, columnist and author. She has contributed articles to publications including The Guardian, Time Magazine, Buzzfeed, The New York Times, Vice, Salon, The Nation, The New Inquiry, Wired, and Medium, is a contributing editor at the New Statesman, and has written a number of books on feminism.