Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent

In the space of a year, Laurie Penny has become one of the most prominent voices of the new left. This book brings together her diverse writings, showing what it is to be young, angry and progressive in the face of an increasingly violent and oppressive UK government. Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent collects Penny's writings on youth politics, resistance, feminism and culture. Her journalism is a unique blend of persuasive analysis, captivating interviews and first-hand accounts of political direct action. She was involved in all the key protests of 2010/2011, including the anti-fees demos in 2010 and the anti-cuts protests of spring 2011, often tweeting live from the scene of kettles and baton charges. An introduction and extensive footnotes allow Penny to connect all the strands of her work, showing the links between political activism and wider social and cultural issues. This book is essential for understanding what motivates the new generation of activists, writers and thinkers that bring creativity, energy and urgency to the fight against capitalism and exploitation.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction I. This is Actually Happening Inside the Millbank Tower Riots; Talking About a Revolution; Inside the Whitehall Kettle; Protesting the Turner Prize; Inside the Parliament Square Kettle; A Right Royal Poke; No Sex, No Drugs and No Leaders; What Really Happened in Trafalgar Square; Lies in London 2. Girl Trouble The Gulag of Desire; In Defence of Cunt; What Sun Readers Swallow With Their Cornflakes; The Sexy Way to Die; Vajazzled and Bemused; Burlesque Laid Bare; Me, the Patriarchy and my Big Red Pen; Galliano’s Fashionable Beliefs; The Princess Craze is no Fairy Tale; Skinny Porn; Violence Against Women in Tahrir Square; Zionism, Chauvinism and the Nature of Rape; A Modesty Slip for Misogyny; Charlie Sheen’s Problem with Women; The Shame is all Theirs 3. Kingdom of Rains Undercover With the Young Conservatives; Buns, Bunting and Retro-Imperialism; This is England; Poppy Day is the Opium of the People; Michael Gove and the Imperialists; The Power of the Intern; Strictly Come Scrounging?; Poverty Pimps: Selling Out the Disabled; A Tale of Three Parties; Simon Hughes and the Cartel of British Politics; The Social Mobility Scam 4. Cultural Capital Facebook, Capitalism and Geek Entitlement; Girls, Tattoos and Men who Hate Women; Pickling Dissent; Julie Burchill’s Imperialist Rant over Israel; Baby Boomers; Bah, Humbug; Interview with China Miéville; I Shall Wear Midnight; It’s all Over for Sex-and-Shopping Feminism; Beyond Noughtie Girls 5. Their Hallucinations, Our Desires Insurrection on Oxford Street; This is no Conspiracy; The Revolution Will Be Civilised; Revolts Don’t Have to be Tweeted; Is that a Truncheon in Your Pocket?; One Man and His Tent; How the Disabled were Dehumanised; Hey, Dave: Our Society’s Bigger Than Yours; In Defence of Squatting; Inside the Gaddafi House Details of Original Publication

About the Author :
Laurie Penny is an award-winning author, columnist, journalist and screenwriter. Her seven books include Bitch Doctrine (Bloomsbury 2017), Unspeakable Things (Bloomsbury 2014), Everything Belongs To The Future (Tor, 2016) and Penny Red (Pluto Press, 2011). As a freelance journalist, she writes essays, columns and longform features about politics, social justice, pop culture, feminism, mental health, technology for the Guardian, Longreads, Time Magazine, Buzzfeed, The New York Times, Vice, Salon, The Nation, The New Statesman, The New Inquiry, Tor.com and Medium. Her short stories have been published by Tor.com, Terraform and in collections for MacMillan and Nautilus Press. She was a 2014-15 Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University. As a screenwriter, Laurie has worked on The Nevers, (HBO), Netflix’s The Haunting, and Amazon’s Carnival Row’ Warren Ellis is a graphic novelist, writer, public speaker and author of the bestselling novel Gun Machine (Mulholland, 2014). He contributed the foreword to Penny Red (Pluto, 2011).

Review :
Cuts, sexism and riots, Laurie Penny's fresh and angry voice captures the moment and the important issues - highly recommended. -- Polly Toynbee Penny is re-inventing the language of dissent, delivering verbal taser-barbs to the left and right, and causing apoplexy among the old men in cardigans who run the British blogosphere. -- Paul Mason, economics editor of BBC's Newsnight In riots, kettles and occupations, and with visceral anger, big-eyed desperation and wicked humour, this is Laurie Penny at her very best; filing articles on her Blackberry from the front line and giving a voice to a generation already at the end of its tether. -- Dan Hancox, author of Kettled Youth (2011)