Biography

Pam is the author of several best-selling poetry collections, including The Works, With These Hands, Surgically Enhanced, You Made Me Late Again!, and Up In The Attic.

Many of her poems are in school textbooks around the world including the UK, USA, China, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, South Africa, Ireland and Singapore. Pam’s autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude, was the UK’s bestselling female autobiography of 2011.

In May 2018 The Last Hedgehog, was published by Picador, and within two weeks went to No. 1 in the Sunday Times Bestseller list. Beautifully illustrated by Alice Tait, the single poem sees our hero tell of all the terrible ends his family have come to at our own hands – and exactly what we can still do to keep them alive and see them thrive once more.

Following The Last Hedgehog, Pam’s most recent book of new poems, Up In The Attic, was published in hardback by Ebury Books in September 2019, and went straight into the Sunday Times Bestseller lists.  The paperback version was released in August 2020.    This was Pam’s first new collection of poetry since You Made Me Late Again was published in 2013.   Up In The Attic includes hilarious poems such as The Dinner Party, Don’t Put My Dinner On The Slate, Geriatric Juliet, and more reflective poems such as Down The Line, which Pam wrote to commemorate the 100^th Anniversary of the end of World War One.

In March 2021 a new edition of Pam’s book, With These Hands, was re-issued by Ebury Press/Penguin Books.   First published in 1997, this book includes many of Pam’s most popular earlier poems including Yes I’ll Marry You My Dear, Will I Have To Be Sexy at Sixty, The Wonderbra, and How Can That Be My Baby?      

In September 2021 Ebury Press published a hardback illustrated anthology, Pam Ayres on Animals, which comprises most of the poems about animals that Pam has written over the almost five decades.

In 2020 Pam was one of the Guest Speakers on Cunard’s flagship, Queen Mary 2, on its 2020 World Voyage cruise to Australia.   While in Australia Pam performed a concert in the Sydney Theatre Company’s Roslyn Packer Theatre, but other scheduled concerts in Australia were subsequently cancelled due to the coronavirus.