Random Home presents the audiobook release of Lowborn by Kerry Hudson.

What does it certainly mean to become poor in Britain today? A prizewinning novelist revisits her child years and some from the country’s most deprived cities

‘When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, is it possible to ever get away that sense of being ‘lowborn’ no matter what lengths you’ve come?’

Kerry Hudson is proudly working course but she was never proudly poor..READING MORE about Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Apart and Time for Britain’s Poorest Cities The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, milling and often dehumanising. Always on the move with her solitary mother, Kerry attended nine primary academic institutions and five secondaries, surviving in B&Bs and council flats. She scores eight out of ten over the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma.

Twenty years later, Kerry’s lifestyle is unrecognisable. She’s a prizewinning novelist that has travelled the globe. She has a secure home, a caring partner and usage of art, music, film and books. But she often finds herself overlooking her shoulder, caught somehow between two worlds.

Lowborn is definitely Kerry’s exploration of where she originated from, revisiting the cities she was raised in to make an effort to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed. She also journeys in to the hardest parts of her very own childhood, because occasionally to be able to move forwards we first have to look back.