Jack Monroe

Jack Monroe (born 17 March 1988) is a British food writer, journalist and activist known for campaigning on poverty issues, particularly hunger relief.

She initially rose to prominence when a post on her blog A Girl Called Jack (now renamed Cooking on a Bootstrap) went viral.

She has published seven cookbooks that focus on "austerity recipes" and meals which can be made on a tight budget.

She has written for publications such as The Echo, The Huffington Post and The Guardian.

Monroe was born in Southend-on-Sea in 1988 to David Hadjicostas and Evelyn Hadjicostas (née Beatty), a former nurse.

Her father is of Greek-Cypriot heritage; he served in the British Army for seven years, then with the fire service for 30 years.

He was awarded an MBE in 2007 Birthday Honours for services to children and families.

Monroe has three siblings.

Monroe was diagnosed with autism and ADHD as a child, though was not made aware of this until she was an adult.

Monroe has described herself variously as working class and as middle class.

She came out as gay aged 15.

Monroe passed the 11-plus examinations and attended Westcliff High School for Girls, a grammar school in Westcliff-on-Sea.

She left school at age 16, "bullied and disillusioned", with insufficient GCSEs (she sat 7 and passed 4 and a half of them) to progress to A Level.

Despite her future career, Monroe said in 2022 that she only achieved a low D grade in her home economics GCSE.

Monroe worked in various jobs, including in a chip shop and then Starbucks.

In 2007 she took a job as a call handler for Essex County Fire and Rescue Service.

After having a child, she was unable to arrange the work around childcare responsibilities, and was unable to negotiate adjustments to her working pattern to make continued employment feasible.

Monroe resigned the post in November 2011.

In December 2012 it was reported in the Daily Mirror that she was unemployed, looking for work and living in poverty.

Monroe came to prominence in July 2012 when the "Hunger Hurts" post on her blog A Girl Called Jack went viral on social media.

The post detailed her experience of poverty, relying on benefits and struggling to feed herself and her child from a £10 weekly food budget.

The blog was originally intended for posts about local politics, but evolved to offer cheap recipes suitable for people on a low budget.

In November 2012, Monroe became a weekly columnist for The Echo, a south Essex daily newspaper.

In February 2013, she was taken on by the paper as a trainee reporter.

She was later retained as an unpaid columnist for The Huffington Post.

In July 2013 Monroe started writing a twice-monthly food and recipe column for The Guardian.

This included cheap recipes aiming to provide family meals for less than £10 per week.

She also contributed a number of political columns.

Monroe has written seven budget cooking recipe books.

In May 2013 she signed her first publishing deal with Penguin Group, reported to be worth £25,000.

A Girl Called Jack was published in February 2014 and a second book A Year in 120 Recipes was published in October 2014.

The third book Cooking on a Bootstrap was initially self-published.

In December 2015, the blog was renamed as Cooking on a Bootstrap.

In December 2015 Monroe set up a crowdfunder on Kickstarter with a target of £8,000.

Within 24 hours the target was met and £23,000 had been raised.

The total raised was over £60,000.

In February 2016 it was announced that a further edition of the book would be published by Bluebird.

It was released in August 2018.

According to BookScan data, by October 2018 Monroe had sold 90,515 copies of her books with A Girl Called Jack her best selling work to date at 67,842 copies sold.

The fourth book Tin Can Cook was published by Bluebird in May 2019.