Introduction

Much like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Caitlin Moran has been caught up in debates around class, gender and feminism in the 2010s. An English journalist, author, and writer for The Times, Caitlin Moran is known for her work in print media, as well as for her feminist memoirs How to be a Woman (2011) and How to Build a Girl (2014). However, she has also been hailed as ‘the UK's answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler and Lena Dunham all rolled into one’ (Bernstein, 2012) – TV comedy-auteures who have gone on to write their own authored memoirs. Moran is distinctive because she has charted a path contrary to that of her peers; she began her career in journalism before transitioning to television, where she created her own comedy series, the central subject of this chapter, Raised by Wolves.

Given that Caitlin wrote the series with her sister, Caroline Moran, it would be unfair to focus only on Caitlin because she is a celebrity feminist. An interview with Caroline will be interwoven throughout this chapter to demonstrate empathy, intimacy and mutuality for creative workers and Caroline as a writer. Indeed, she has an important history of writing for stage and screen. Her one-act play Prepper, performed at the National Theatre in 2015, was developed into a BBC 4 radio sitcom and won Best Radio Comedy at the Writers’ Guild Awards in 2020. More recently, she collaborated with Northern comedian Lucy Beaumont to co-write the Channel 4 sitcom Hullraisers. She also created the BBC comedy Henpocalypse!, where five women venture to a cottage in rural Wales for a bachelorette party, only to be interrupted by the end of the world. Caroline's interest and experience in comedy were integral to the creation of Raised by Wolves.