Jackie Kay

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Jackie Kay
Jackie Kay3.JPG
Jackie Kay, 2013
Born (1961-11-09) 9 November 1961 (age 63)
Edinburgh, Scotland
Alma mater University of Stirling
Occupation Professor of creative writing at Newcastle University
Known for Poet and novelist

Jackie Kay MBE FRSE (born 9 November 1961) is a Scottish poet and novelist.[1] She is the third modern Makar, the Scottish poet laureate.

Biography

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted as a baby by a white Scottish couple, Helen and John Kay, and grew up in Bishopbriggs, a suburb of Glasgow, in a 1950s-built housing estate in a small Wimpey house, which her adoptive parents had bought new in 1957. They adopted Jackie in 1961 having already adopted her brother, Maxwell, about two years earlier. Jackie and Maxwell also have siblings who were brought up by their biological parents.

Her adoptive father worked for the Communist Party full-time and stood for Member of Parliament,[2] and her adoptive mother was the Scottish secretary of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In August 2007, Jackie Kay was the subject of the fourth episode of the BBC Radio 4 series The House I Grew Up In, in which she talked about her childhood.[1]

Initially harbouring ambitions to be an actress, she decided to concentrate on writing after Alasdair Gray, a Scottish artist and writer, read her poetry and told her that writing was what she should be doing. She studied English at the University of Stirling and her first book of poetry, the partially autobiographical The Adoption Papers, was published in 1991 and won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award. This is a multiply voiced collection of poetry that deals with identity, race, nationality, gender, and sexuality from the perspectives of three women: an adopted biracial child, her adoptive mother, and her biological mother. Her other awards include the 1994 Somerset Maugham Award for Other Lovers, and the Guardian Fiction Prize for Trumpet, inspired by the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton, born Dorothy Tipton, who lived as a man for the last fifty years of his life.[citation needed]

Kay writes extensively for stage (in 1988 her play Twice Over was the first by a Black writer to be produced by Gay Sweatshop Theatre Group),[3] screen and for children. Her drama The Lamplighter is an exploration of the Atlantic slave trade. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2007[4] and published in poem form in 2008.[5]

In 2010 she published Red Dust Road, an account of her search for her biological parents, who had met each other when her father was a student at Aberdeen University and her mother was a nurse.

Kay is openly lesbian.[6][7] She had a 15-year relationship with poet Carol Ann Duffy.[8]

Jackie Kay was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) on 17 June 2006. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University,[9] and Cultural Fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University. Kay lives in Manchester. She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, with a piece based on a book of the King James Bible.[10] In October 2014, it was announced that she had been appointed as the Chancellor of the University of Salford, and that she would be the university's "Writer in Residence" from 1 January 2015.[11]

In March 2016, it was announced that Kay would be taking up the position of Scots Makar (national poet of Scotland), succeeding Liz Lochhead, whose tenure ended in January 2016.[12][13]

Awards and honours

External video
video icon Jackie Kay, vimeo format[14]

Selected works

Some other poetry used in GCSE Edexcel Syllabus

  • Brendon Gallacher
  • Lucozade
  • Yellow

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Jackie Kay, "My old man: a voyage around our fathers", The Observer, 15 June 2008.
  3. ↑ "Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company", Unfinished Histories – Recording the History of Alternative Theatre.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Bloodaxe Books, 2008; ISBN 978-1-85224-804-8
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ "Jackie Kay – Hadassah in response to Esther", Sixty-Six Books, Bush Theatre.
  11. ↑ "Appointment of new Chancellor", University of Salford, Greater Manchester, 17 October 2014.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ 9 April 2013, Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, Georgetown University.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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