Jenni Fagan: Ootlin

Presented as part of Durham Book Festival

‘The government told a story about me before I was born.’

Property of the state before birth, author Jenni Fagan had lived in fourteen different homes and had her name changed multiple times by the age of seven.

Jenni joins us to discuss her extraordinary memoir, Ootlin, detailing a life of displacement and exclusion, the persistent failings of the UK care system, and the power of storytelling.

Jenni Fagan is the award-winning author of four novels, including The Panopticon and eight poetry collections. Ootlin won the Gordon Burn Prize  and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for non-fiction in 2025.

Chaired by Terri White