The author: Mary O’Hara

Mary O’Hara is an award-winning journalist, producer and author specialising in social policy and social justice. Her journalism appears in publications including The Guardian and Mosaic Science. Most recently she was named Best Foreign Columnist 2020 at the Southern California Journalism Awards for her Guardian column, Lesson From America.

Mary is the author of two non-fiction books: Austerity Bites: A Journey to the Sharp End of Cuts in the UK (2014) and The Shame Game: Overturning the toxic poverty narrative (2020) and is a contributor to the book, The Violence of Austerity (2017) and others including Council Skies by the artist, Pete McKee (2019) and Vulnerable Consumers and the Law, edited by Christine Riefa and Severine Saintier, published by Routledge (2021).

She is the producer and director of the documentary short, Beyond the Railings and has been a producer, booker and consultant on the podcast Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness. She is the founder of the anti-poverty initiative, Project Twist-It.

In 2009/10 Mary was an Alistair Cooke Fulbright Scholar at UC Berkeley. She is on the board of the charity, Arts Emergency, is the founder and chair of the David Nobbs Memorial Trust supporting new comedy writers and is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

Follow her on Twitter @maryohara1 | Mary’s website is maryohara.eu