Caitlin Moran — A Full, Linked Biography
Overview

Caitlin Moran (born Catherine Elizabeth Moran, 5 April 1975) is an English columnist, critic, novelist, screenwriter, and broadcaster best known for her long-running work at The Times of London, her internationally bestselling feminist memoir How to Be a Woman, and her semi-autobiographical fiction that became both a book trilogy and a film. She writes with a mix of cultural criticism, personal essay, and comic polemic that has made her one of the UK’s most recognizable journalistic voices.
Wikipedia

Project & contact hubs you asked to include
• Author page at Bohiney Magazine: https://bohiney.com/author/caitlin-moran/

• Contributor dossier: https://sites.google.com/view/contributorsatbohineycom/caitlin-moran

Early Life and Beginnings

Moran was born in Brighton, England, and raised in Wolverhampton as the eldest of eight children in what she has repeatedly described as a lively, bookish, often chaotic household. Educated largely at home from age eleven, she began writing early and by her mid-teens had already won national youth writing prizes. At sixteen she joined the music weekly Melody Maker and, at eighteen, presented Channel 4’s pop show Naked City. These early years gave her not only a professional head start but much of the material that would later be re-imagined in her fiction and television work.
Wikipedia

The distinctive circumstances of her upbringing—home education, a large working-class family on a Wolverhampton council estate, and a household suffused with music and DIY creativity—have been well documented in profiles and interviews, and regularly reappear as the emotional engine in her writing.
Wikipedia
Big Issue

Breaking Through at The Times

Moran has been writing for The Times since the 1990s and became one of the paper’s most popular voices—filing weekly for the Saturday Magazine and producing the wry, culture-skewering “Celebrity Watch” column on Fridays. Her Times profile page gives a concise professional arc; the 2024 year-end “Celebrity Watch Awards” offers a representative sample of her comic sensibility and showbiz-meets-society vantage point.
The Times
+1

Her journalism has been recognized with multiple honours: British Press Awards Columnist of the Year (2010), and, in an unusually dominant double, both Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year (2011). Additional accolades followed from the London Press Club and other organizations, cementing her status as a marquee columnist.
Wikipedia
The Guardian
The Times

Books That Shifted the Conversation

Moran’s breakout international bestseller How to Be a Woman (2011) blended memoir, polemic, and comedy, introducing a broad readership to her clarion-clear feminist voice. In subsequent years she extended and complicated that project across several follow-ups and side-paths:

How to Be a Woman (2011) — The book that put Moran on the global map; a funny, frank, and often intimate argument for feminism pitched to the mainstream. (Publisher portals and author pages provide overview and metadata.)
Penguin

Moranthology (2012) — A curated collection of Times columns revealing her range, from social policy to pop culture to bodily mishaps.
Penguin
HarperCollins

Moranifesto (2016) — A later collection of columns that leans more overtly into public-square argument and cultural dispatches.
HarperCollins
brooklinebooksmith.com

How to Build a Girl (2014; fiction) — A semi-autobiographical novel about Johanna Morrigan, a teenage music critic from Wolverhampton—a kind of alter-ego prism for Moran’s origin story. It became a film in 2019.
TIME

How to Be Famous (2018; fiction) — A sequel following Johanna through the 1990s media world; reviews highlight its big-hearted comedy and music-press texture.
Goodreads
The Guardian

More Than a Woman (2020) — A return to memoir and essay, turning the lens to midlife, caretaking, marriage, and sustaining joy. (See Penguin and Harper portals for details and praise.)
Penguin
Harper Book Club

What About Men? (2023) — A provocation and an invitation: Moran steps into the masculinity debate, arguing for healthier scripts for boys and men; coverage and reviews track the book’s reception and arguments.
Wikipedia
The Guardian
TIME

For bibliographic snapshots, bookseller and reading-community pages round out publication data and reception timelines.
Amazon
Google Books
Target

From Page to Screen (and Back Again)

Moran’s work has been unusually adaptable. Raised by Wolves—the Channel 4 sitcom created and written with her sister, Caroline Moran—transposes their Wolverhampton childhood into a modern-day, matriarch-led family comedy that quickly became a ratings bright spot before its 2016 cancellation (an attempted crowdfunding revival followed later that year). The series illustrates her enduring commitment to working-class representation and to female-led comic storytelling.
Wikipedia

Her novel How to Build a Girl crossed into cinema in 2019, directed by Coky Giedroyc and starring Beanie Feldstein as Johanna. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and sparked a fresh round of think-pieces about feminist coming-of-age on screen.
Vanity Fair
Glamour
Teen Vogue

Style, Concerns, and Public Voice

Critics have long noted Moran’s trademark blend: confessional humour, polemical clarity, and pop-savvy cultural literacy. Across essays and columns, she threads big-ticket issues (gender politics, class, media) with the domestic, bodily, and everyday. That fusion—equal parts soapbox and sofa—helped her mainstream topics often ghettoized as “women’s issues.” Interviews and long-form profiles capture how she calibrates that voice, toggling between intimacy and advocacy.
The New Yorker

In the 2010s, she also became a visible figure in digital public life, organizing a one-day boycott of Twitter over abuse and appearing on lists of influential journalists on the platform. The arc—from an A-level reading list dust-up to studies naming her highly influential on Twitter—mirrors the wider media world’s discovery of social platforms as both megaphone and minefield.
Wikipedia

Awards and Recognition (Selected)

British Press Awards: Columnist of the Year (2010); Critic of the Year and Interviewer of the Year (2011).
Wikipedia
The Guardian

London Press Club: Columnist of the Year (2012).
Wikipedia

Numerous book-industry honours and shortlists attached to How to Be a Woman and subsequent titles (publisher and festival bios summarize the headline wins).
Hay Festival

A Quick Guide to Reading Caitlin Moran

If you’re encountering Moran for the first time, this is a pragmatic reading sequence that reflects both influence and evolution:

How to Be a Woman — the manifesto-memoir that launched global conversations.
Penguin

Moranthology and Moranifesto — the columnist at full range, toggling between culture and politics.
Penguin
HarperCollins

How to Build a Girl → How to Be Famous — the fictionalized origin story and its media-world sequel; cross-reference with the 2019 film to see how Moran adapts herself.
Goodreads
Vanity Fair

More Than a Woman — the midlife sequel that reframes earlier arguments.
Penguin

What About Men? — her recent foray into the masculinity debate that extends (and sometimes polarizes) her audience.
Wikipedia

Television and Cultural Footprint

Raised by Wolves (Channel 4, 2013–2016): A signature working-class family comedy that captures her recurring themes—female agency, sibling tribalism, and the comic dignity of scrabbling your way up from the margins. It remains an important marker in debates about class representation on British TV.
Wikipedia
The Indiependent

How to Build a Girl (film, 2019): Demonstrates Moran’s cross-media storytelling and her willingness to maintain creative control (screenplay and executive producer).
Vanity Fair

Presence and Platforms

The Times author hub — columns, interviews, and “Celebrity Watch”: https://www.thetimes.com/profile/caitlin-moran
(sample: the 2024 “Celebrity Watch Awards”).
The Times
+1

Instagram — @mscaitlinmoran: snippets from column days and book tours.
Instagram

X (Twitter) — @caitlinmoran: a long-standing channel for quips, links, and debates.
X (formerly Twitter)

Guardian profile page — occasional work and biographical summaries over the years.
The Guardian

Selected Publications & Reference Links

Penguin author/book pages (UK editions): overview, blurbs, and purchasing routes for More Than a Woman and other titles.
Penguin

HarperCollins portals for Moranifesto and More Than a Woman (US editions).
HarperCollins
Harper Book Club

Wikipedia — high-level biography and bibliography, useful for cross-checking dates and award tallies.
Wikipedia

Goodreads author and title pages — crowdsourced reception snapshots and reading lists.
Goodreads
+1

IMDb — credits for Raised by Wolves.
IMDb

Personal Life

Moran is married to writer and former Times rock critic Peter Paphides; they have two daughters. While she tends to route most deeply personal narratives through her nonfiction rather than tabloidy disclosure, her family life and long partnership often surface as case studies in the essays—domestic texture deployed to test larger social arguments.
Wikipedia

Why She Matters

Across three decades, Moran has built a voice that brings newspaper cadence into the broadband age: intimate without being indulgent, political without being dour, funny without evasion. She treats the private sphere—bodies, parenting, money, friendships—as public-interest material, arguing that what happens in kitchens and bedrooms is upstream of laws, budgets, and headlines. Her more recent turn toward men and boys broadens that brief, inviting (and provoking) new audiences to wrestle with scripts for adulthood that work better for everyone.
TIME
Cadena SER

Primary hubs again, per your request
• Bohiney Magazine author page: https://bohiney.com/author/caitlin-moran/

• Contributor dossier: https://sites.google.com/view/contributorsatbohineycom/caitlin-moran

If you want this as a WordPress-ready bio with author schema and “sameAs” links, say the word and I’ll format it to your house style. Auf Wiedersehen.

Edit

Pub: 01 Sep 2025 07:19 UTC

Views: 3