Biteback acquires urgent exploration of poverty crisis

Biteback Publishing has acquired Broke: Fixing Britain’s Poverty Crisis, a collection of reported essays on the reality of deprivation in modern Britain. It will be edited by Tom Clark and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Olivia Beattie, editorial director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Jessica Bullock at the Wylie Agency. Broke will publish in March 2023. 

The synopsis reads: “A dozen years into austerity, statistical warning lights are flashing to suggest a return to types of deprivation that we once imagined we had consigned to the history books. In the decade up to the pandemic, the official count of rough sleepers doubled. Recorded malnutrition in hospital patients has tripled. Dependence on food banks is up by an order of magnitude.

"And yet it has never been statistics but rather individual human stories—from the fictionalised accounts of Dickens to the faithful reporting of Orwell and Priestley—that have seared the reality of hard times into the public imagination.

Tom Clark has assembled today’s masters of social reportage to go deep into the communities so often ignored by politicians, introducing us to those at the hardest end of the poverty crisis.

"With contributions from Jem Bartholomew, Cal Flyn, Dani Garavelli, Frances Ryan, Samira Shackle, Daniel Trilling and Jennifer Williams, the collection will feature chapters on cold, hunger, homelessness, ill-health, disability, debt, work and the migrant experience. Kerry Hudson, the award-winning author of Lowborn, will provide a foreword, while Joel Goodman’s bespoke photography will bring the characters to life.”

Clark said: “Between them, Broke’s writers have all the National Press Award commendations, Orwell Prize nominations and Royal Society of Literature endorsements you could hope for. But what’s just as important is that some also have first-hand experience of the issues raised. That matters, because if there’s one thing missing from the political discussion that has led us towards today’s privations, it is empathy. Ahead of a general election in which collapsing living standards will loom large, this is the gap Broke will fill.”

Beattie added: “Broke brings together some of the best journalists writing today to blend powerful human stories with analysis of the policies that have led us to where we are now. With its vivid reportage of just how far the cost-of-living crisis has spread, it’s incredibly clear-sighted about the human cost of austerity politics—and the reforms we urgently need.”