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 (later 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.
Early life 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 appointed 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.
Education 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.
Career
Early work 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.
Blogging 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 December 2015, the blog was renamed as Cooking on a Bootstrap.
Newspapers 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.
Books 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 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. Monroe raised over £30,000 through a fundraiser on the website GoFundMe in order to send 7,000 copies of the book to food banks. A deal with Bluebird for two further books was announced in June 2019. Vegan (ish) was released in December 2019. Good Food for Bad Days was released in May 2020. A seventh book Thrifty Kitchen of money-saving recipes and home hacks was announced in October 2022 for release in January 2023. The publisher Bluebird put out a statement shortly after release warning that some of the hacks could be dangerous. These included: using a sharp knife and hammer to open tin cans without an opener, freezing glass bottles filled with water to use as a rolling pin, using empty tuna tins as egg rings and straining hot liquids via a piece of cotton held up with carabiners on a hook.
Television In 2013, Monroe appeared in a six-week advertising campaign for Sainsbury's supermarket. Writing in The Guardian in 2013 Monroe said she had accepted the equivalent of the living wage for the six weeks that the campaign ran and donated the remainder of the fee to charities including a food bank. Monroe appeared on BBC television's late night political programme This Week in June 2015 and again in May 2019. In April 2020, it was announced that Monroe would co-host Daily Kitchen Live on BBC One alongside Matt Tebbutt. The programme, made in response to issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, offered tips and guidance to families struggling with limited resources, and aired daily for a two-week period that commenced on 14 April 2020.
Campaigning In 2015 Monroe was an ambassador for Child Poverty Action Group. She raised funds for the Live Below the Line campaign. In March 2022, Monroe complained that due to inflation poor people could not afford food, fuel and rent, and were having to go without food or fuel, or were eating unhealthily because they could not afford healthy food. Monroe called for social security benefits to be raised in line with inflation. In May 2022, Monroe criticised Conservative MP Lee Anderson's praise in the House of Commons for a food bank which has a compulsory cooking and budgeting class for those accepting food parcels.
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