Penny was born in London, the daughter of Ray Barnett, a lawyer. She is of Irish, Jewish, and Maltese descent, and has described herself as an "atheist child of a lapsed Jew and a lapsed Catholic". She grew up in Brighton and Lewes, attending the independent school Brighton College with a scholarship. As a teenager she suffered from anorexia and was hospitalised at age 17, subsequently making a recovery. 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.
Career
Punditry
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. In April 2011, Penny presented the Channel 4Dispatches 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. 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 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 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. 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 siteFacebook for using a pseudonymous alias. In August 2015, she endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.
Publications
Penny is the author of ' and Penny Red: Notes from a New Age of Dissent. 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. Her 2013 work Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet contemplates online harassment and its motivations. ' 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 followed in 2016. Her seventh book, Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults, was longlisted for the 2018 Orwell Prize.
Awards
2010: Orwell Prize for blogging, shortlist
2012: Bread and Roses Award, shortlist, Penny Red: Notes from the New Age of Dissent
2014: Red Women of the Year Award, blogger category, shortlist
