Richard Walker Hardwick has been a social worker, worked in a homeless hostel and now teaches writing in prison. He tells Steve Pratt about his debut novel and why he wants to help others publish their stories.

THE narrator of Richard Walker Hardwick’s debut novel is 16-yearold Danny, who is living in a hostel for young homeless people. Although the Hartlepool-born writer was working in such a place while penning the book, he emphasises that it’s not an account of his time there, or about any of the people he met.

What he hopes is that Kicked Out will help counter the bad press many young people receive and make people aware of why young people behave as they do.

“The book isn’t influenced by any particular person in that hostel because that would have seemed wrong,” he says, when we meet in advance of the book’s launch in Newcastle tomorrow.

“To me, Danny is symbolic of dozens and dozens of young men that I’ve worked with, and probably thousands of young people in the same situation,” he says.

“It represents a lot of young people at a crossroads in their life.

“The story is narrated by Danny in his language and with his thoughts, because I feel so much interaction with young people is focused downwards. It tells them what to do, how to behave, what they should aim for. A lot of meetings professionals have with them are extremely formal. So this is focussed upwards – it’s his thoughts and what it’s like to be in the hostel with ten other people.”

Residents in the Newcastle emergency access hostel for homeless young people, where Hardwick worked, read the book in manuscript form and responded with comments such as “like looking in a mirror” and “mint”.

Hardwick, 39, has had a varied career. He’s been a social worker in Sunderland and currently combines writing his second book with teaching creative writing at Frankland Prison, near Durham City.

Talking to him, Kicked Out brings out the social worker. His passion to put young people’s side of things is undeniable. He believes a book like Kicked Out can go some way towards doing that. Or, as he puts it, reach upwards “to those who work with them, those that judge them without understanding, or those that simply want to understand more”.

He worked as a journalist in television, but there pictures, not words, were what was remembered, so he began his first novel. After writing 70,000 words, he realised it wasn’t any good and “chucked it”.

He started again on a completely different subject. Kicked Out was born. “I’d been working in a hostel for about two years so I knew all the issues,” he explains.

“It took about two-and-a-half years to write – I was working overnight and on late shift at the hostel, had a small child and another one being born, so it was a very busy personal time for me.

“I spent as much time as I could writing. I’d often wake up at four o’clock in the morning, do a couple of hours on the laptop before my children woke up at six, get them ready for school, go to work, come back and do a couple more hours writing.”

What interested him was the perception of young people and the public persona that they sometimes adopted. Because he’d been involved through his work, he didn’t feel the need for too much research, apart from matters like heroin use and multiple personality disorder.

His words in the book are supplemented by lyrics by local musician/rapper Rick Fury, who sings in the band, Dialect.

“Initially, I had American rap lyrics. The idea was that music is so important to young people, it shapes them, and often they adopt an identity that’s related to music.

“When I finished, I decided I’d prefer something local and was put in touch with Dialect, from South Shields. Rick’s lyrics fit beautifully.

He’s been homeless for a time, he’s lived the story of the book and come through it.”

He and Fury will be performing at the launch at Waterstone’s, Newcastle, with another date set for Borders in London’s Oxford Street and, hopefully, festivals during the summer.

London-based Beautiful Books is publishing the book which, with media exposure about anti-social behaviour and feral youth, Hardwick believes is as relevant as ever.

“I don’t condone criminal behaviour, or antisocial behaviour at all, but because it’s Danny’s story – and the story of others like him – it does try to make people understand why people might behave in that way.

“I’ve met many young men who have a right to be angry with their lives and the circumstances they were born into. If they weren’t angry there really would be something wrong with them.

“Danny is like a lot of young men in that he has a macho exterior and wouldn’t like anyone to think he was sensitive or soft because he fears people would take advantage of him.

“In his life he has to portray himself as tough and uncaring. But inside, Danny, like all these macho lads, is the same as anyone else. He just wants a normal life – a job, a house, a car, a girlfriend, eventually kids, a bit of money.

“The book shows the sensitive side. When you work in a hostel and see people at a low ebb, you do get to see their sensitive side.

They’re insecure and scared, like a lot of other people, about their futures and that macho front is simply that – a front.”

He was asked to teach creative writing at Frankland after first going inside to teach at a summer school. “The thing I love about writing and helping other people write is there are stories inside everyone. What I’d like to do is make money out of my own writing, but also be able to travel through society and help others write their stories.

“Eventually, I’d like to get prisoners’ stories published. Then go on to places like victim support, mental health places, get stories from people with schizophrenia and old people in care homes. I’d like to enable people to tell them and get them published.”

In the past, he’s never worked in the same job longer than four years. Now that has changed.

“I know I want to stay in the field of writing, both my own and helping others,” he says.

■ Kicked Out by Richard Walker Hardwick (Beautiful Books £7.99).