First in the World Somewhere: The True Adventures of a Scribbler, Siren, Saucepot and Pioneer

Penny Pepper has led an extraordinary life. She is a writer. Poet. Punk. Pioneer. Activist. And she also happens to be disabled. In her absorbing memoir, which spans the mid-1980s up until the millennium, Penny paints a picture of life, love, sex, music, success, failure and misadventures in the UK punk scene of the late 20th century.

Craving freedom from the poor Chiltern Hill council estate where she grew up, Pennydreams of moving to London, of writing, of finding her way in the North London music scene. She doesn’t have what others take for granted; she is disabled. And she sets out with just her raw, burgeoning talent to fight the social demons of indifference, discrimination and out-right bigotry… all while wearing micro-mini leather bondage skirts, fishnets and hair extensions.

There are parties; there’s sex; there’s music. She exchanges letters with Morrissey. Ken Livingstone helps her find a wheelchair-accessible flat. Her demo tape is reviewed in the NME and played on the radio. Her 90s album Spiral Sky is No. 1 in Greece for a week. And there is opportunity – opportunity to join the radical beginnings of the disability rightsmovement.

First in the World Somewhere tells of her endless adventures. Through the years, there’s an overload of adventure, despair and joy. Often faced with prejudice, she fails, she suffers, she survives and she even sometimes succeeds. Penny does not deny her disability; rather she keeps it at the forefront of everything

Penny Pepper is a genre-defying writer and well-known rights activist. She wrote the taboo-breaking book Desires Reborn in 2012, and in 2013 she won a Creative Futures Literary Award. In 2014 her one-woman spoken word show, Lost in Spaces, premiered to strong reviews at Soho Theatre, and then toured in autumn 2015. She has appeared as a guest on the Victoria Derbyshire show, Newsnight, Sky News and BBC Radio5 Live Hitlist. She has written columns for the Guardian and Access magazine and a blog for Mslexia magazine.