Newborn
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  • Published: 6 March 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529931471
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

Newborn

Running Away, Breaking with the Past, Building a New Family

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Feb 2024
Audiobook
1 Feb 2024
Paperback
6 Mar 2025
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The new memoir from prize-winning Kerry Hudson about her struggle to build a safe, loving home for her baby – the very opposite of the home she grew up in

‘I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it’ Giovanna Fletcher, Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast

The new memoir from Kerry Hudson about her struggle to build a safe, loving home for her baby – the very opposite of the home she grew up in...

‘Absorbing’ Irish Times
‘Filled with colour’ Amy Liptrot, author of The Outrun
‘A rallying cry’ Herald

How do you build a family without a blueprint to work from?

Kerry Hudson grew up in poverty. Always on the move, shuttled between the care system and her chaotic mother, she left school at 15 without qualifications. Now a prize-winning writer, she looks back and asks: how do you create a different life for yourself and your family?

In Newborn we see how Kerry found love, what it took to decide to start a family of her own and how fragile every step of the journey towards parenthood was. All along the way, she faces obstacles that would test the strongest foundations, from struggles with fertility to being locked down in a Prague maternity hospital to a marriage in crisis. But over and over again, her love, hope, fight – and determination to break patterns and give her son a different life – win through and light her path.

PRAISE FOR KERRY HUDSON:

‘It’s not just Kerry Hudson’s writing that is vibrant, authentic and true, it’s the person herself, it’s where the writing comes from; a wise and generous heart’ KIT DE WAAL

'Hudson’s resilience, grace and humility are staggering. She’s an absolute inspiration’ DOUGLAS STUART

‘Kerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes’ PHILIPPA PERRY
  • Published: 6 March 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529931471
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $29.99
Categories:

About the author

Kerry Hudson

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award and was shortlisted for an array of prizes including the Guardian First Book Award and the Sky Arts Awards. Thirst, her second novel, won the prestigious prix Femina etranger. Lowborn is her first work of non-fiction, and her journey has led to a highly successful column for the Pool. She currently lives in Liverpool.

portrait photo of Kerry Hudson

Also by Kerry Hudson

Lowborn
Thirst
Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma
See all

Praise for Newborn

It was always going to be difficult to follow Lowborn, but Kerry Hudson is Kerry Hudson and she has done it -- cleverly, honestly, brilliantly

RODDY DOYLE

Filled with colour: food, Prague, illness, love, the challenges of having a baby in a foreign country and making your own story

AMY LIPTROT

Hudson nails many parents' innermost thoughts while asking if she can really give her son a different life

Red

Her memoirs are a rallying cry to those still stuck in the quagmire not to let society’s low expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy

Herald

An absorbing read, written in Hudson's fluent, companionable prose

Jessica Traynor, Irish Times

I've just literally devoured Newborn and absolutely loved it

Giovanna Fletcher, Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast