[ About Hungry ]
Katriona O’Sullivan has come a long way from the poverty, chaos and abuse she knew growing up. A respected academic and bestselling author, she defied every expectation placed on the teenage mother she once was.
Yet even as the accolades arrived, old beliefs held fast. No degree, no award, no recognition could silence the sense that she was only worthy when her body looked the way society said it should.
In this fierce and fearless memoir, she pulls back the curtain on her journey: the relentless comparison to the curated bodies of strangers on the internet, the dangerous weight‑loss treatments, the attempts to reshape herself into an impossible ideal – and how she slowly learned to accept and love herself.
Hungry is an unforgettable examination of how gender, class and trauma shape a woman’s sense of worth. It is one woman’s story – and a rallying cry for every woman who has ever felt she had to shrink to survive.
[ My Review ]
Hungry: A Biography of My Body by Katriona O’Sullivan published April 23rd with Hachette Ireland and is described as ‘a raw, courageous exploration of survival, identity and the lifelong search for self-acceptance.’
In 2023 I was in a taxi in Dublin on my way to the train station, following a wonderful evening at the Irish Book Awards. It was the year that Katriona O’Sullivan’s staggeringly powerful biography Poor had picked up two awards. At that point I hadn’t read the book but the taxi driver had. He pulled out the copy that he carried with him to read between jobs and was telling me how incredible and impactful her words were. It took me until 2025 to finally dive in, after my daughter passed her copy onto me, telling me in no uncertain words that I had to read it. I never wrote a review for Poor because I just could not put into words the emotions I felt upon completion. Here was a woman who had suffered horrors beyond my comprehension yet, through pure grit and determination, and some unstoppable force, was now a professor of psychology and a voice for the voiceless.
A few weeks ago, Cork World Book Fest held an event on a Sunday afternoon. Over three hundred people packed into a venue to listen to Katriona O’Sullivan in conversation with Deirdre O’Shaughnessy, chatting about her latest book.
At the same time the Cork Hurling team were playing a very important match down the road but no one was checking their phones for the score. We all sat enthralled by this funny, warm, entertaining woman, who shied away from nothing as she spoke of her life since writing Poor and her continued fractious relationship with her body.
When O’Sullivan wrote Poor, she honestly thought that that was it, her story had been told. But as life continued, so did her struggles, so she made a decision to get back to her writing. This time though her focus was on her body and her constant battle with her personal reality as a woman in today’s society versus expectation.
In Hungry: A Biography of My Body Katriona O’Sullivan reflects on her earlier years. She reminds readers of Poor of those dark times when she battled, against all the odds, to survive the abuse and the poverty of growing up in a family with two addicts as caregivers. She goes deeper into some of her memories, right back to that time when she was a carefree little girl doing cartwheels with her legs in the air and not a worry in the world, clueless as to what lay ahead. But what that little girl also didn’t know was that she was brave, courageous and fearless, someone who would become a beacon of hope for others. someone who would strive forward in her career, find a loving partner and have children.
Like most women today, O’Sullivan’s insecurities are many. Her honesty about her constant battle with her weight and her need to look a certain way is so utterly refreshing. The relentless push on women to reach unattainable perfection is across every media outlet with us all under pressure to try certain products and treatment that will make us look a certain way. These marketing ploys will make us happy right? Wrong. We all know this but O’Sullivan doesn’t beat around the bush, she says it like it is.
‘The pressure to be slim and young, thick and curvy or thin and waif-like affects all of us – but what we do to get there differs on where we are from’
O’Sullivan doesn’t have the answers but what she does have is a platform and she uses it with positive intention. There is no filter. There is no sanitising of her words. She is who she is…and that is more than enough.
Hungry: A Biography of My Body is a personal biography, an inspiring story about one woman’s struggle to learn self-acceptance and self-worth. But it is also an exploration of what it is to be a woman today and the societal pressures that weigh us down. A raw and compassionate book, Hungry: A Biography of My Body is profoundly affecting and relatable. It is savage and uncompromising. Parts of it are every woman’s story but ultimately this is Katriona O’Sullivan’s story, one written with dignity, integrity and authenticity.
[Thank you to Hachette Ireland for a copy of Hungry in exchange for my honest review ]
[ Bio ]
Dr Katriona O’Sullivan is a professor of psychology and the bestselling author of Poor, winner of Biography of the Year and Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. The memoir has been translated into seven languages, adapted into a sold-out play at Dublin’s Gate Theatre, and remained in Ireland’s top-ten nonfiction chart for two years. A regular commentator on the BBC and across Irish and international media, she has spoken at Westminster, the UN and UNESCO.
Born in Coventry to Irish parents, her early life was marked by poverty, addiction, teenage pregnancy and homelessness. In 1998, she moved to Dublin, where she entered Trinity College through the access programme and went on to earn a PhD in psychology. Now a professor at Maynooth University, she directs the National Centre for Inclusive Higher Education and leads the award-winning STEM Passport for Inclusion, which has supported over 10,000 young people from underserved communities into higher education and high-status careers.
Sounds like a powerful read! xx
It is all that Nicki. Thank you xx