Jackie Kay
Encyclopedia
Jackie Kay MBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born 1961) is a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist.

Biography

Jackie Kay was born in Glasgow in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, Jonathan C. Okafor who later became a prominent tropical plant taxonomist. She was adopted by a Scottish white couple Helen and John Kay and brought up in Bishopbriggs
Bishopbriggs
Bishopbriggs is a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. The area was once part of the historic parish of Cadder - originally lands granted by King William the Lion to the Bishop of Glasgow, Jocelin, in 1180. It was later part of the county of Lanarkshire and subsequently an independent burgh from...

, a suburb of Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

.

Kay was brought up in a 1950s-built Glasgow housing estate in a small Wimpey
George Wimpey
George Wimpey was formed in 1880 and, based in Hammersmith, operated largely as a road surfacing contractor. The business was acquired by Godfrey Mitchell in 1919 and he developed it into the UK’s pre-eminent construction and housebuilding firm. In 2007, Wimpey merged with Taylor Woodrow to create...

 house, which her adoptive parents had bought new in 1957. They adopted Kay in 1961 having already adopted Jackie's brother, Maxwell, about 2 years earlier. Jackie and Maxwell also have siblings who were brought up by the genetic parents. Kay's adoptive father worked for the Communist Party
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...

 full-time and stood for Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

, and her adoptive mother was the Scottish secretary of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...

. In August 2007 Kay was the subject of the fourth episode of The House I Grew Up In
The House I Grew Up In
The House I Grew Up In is a BBC radio series. The first episode of the first series was broadcast on 6 August 2007 on BBC Radio 4. With the presenter Wendy Robbins, each week an influential Briton explains some of their thoughts and memories as he or she goes back to the locality and the house in...

, in which she talked about a happy childhood in a stimulating, albeit unconventional, home.

Initially harbouring ambitions to be an actress, she decided to concentrate on writing after Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...

, a Scottish artist and writer, read her poetry and told her that writing was what she should be doing. She studied English
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

 at the University of Stirling
University of Stirling
The University of Stirling is a campus university founded by Royal charter in 1967, on the Airthrey Estate in Stirling, Scotland.-History and campus development:...

 and her first book of poetry, the partially autobiographical The Adoption Papers, was published in 1991 and won the Saltire Society
Saltire Society
The Saltire Society was established in 1936 to encourage everything that might improve the quality of life in Scotland and restore the country to its proper place as a creative force in European civilisation....

 Scottish First Book Award. Her other awards include the 1994 Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...

 for Other Lovers, and the Guardian First Book Award
Guardian First Book Award
Guardian First Book Award, issued before 1999 as Guardian Fiction Prize or Guardian Fiction Award, is awarded to new writing in fiction and non-fiction.-History:...

Fiction Prize for Trumpet, based on the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton
Billy Tipton
Billy Lee Tipton was an American jazz musician and bandleader. Born Dorothy Tipton, he also notable for the discovery, after his death, that he was female assigned at birth.- Early life :...

, born Dorothy Tipton, who lived as a man for the last fifty years of her life.

Kay writes extensively stage, screen and for children. In 2010 she published Red Dust Road, an account of her search for her birth parents, a white Scottish woman and a Nigerian man. Her birth parents had met when her father was a student at Aberdeen University and her mother was a nurse. Her drama The Lamplighter is an exploration of the Atlantic slave trade. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2007 and published in poem form in 2008.

Jackie Kay became a Member of the Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (MBE) on 17 June 2006. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Kay lives in Manchester.

She will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre
Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...

's 2011 project Sixty Six where she has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible

Awards and honours

  • 2011 Costa Book Awards
    2011 Costa Book Awards
    The shortlists were announced on 16 November 2011. The winners in each category will be announced in January 2012.-Children's Book:Winner:*TBDShortlist:*Martyn Bedford, Flip*Frank Cottrell Boyce, The Unforgotten Coat...

     (Poetry), shortlist, Fiere

Selected works

  • The Adoption Papers (Poetry - 1991)
  • Other Lovers (Poetry - 1993)
  • Off Colour (Poetry - 1998)
  • Trumpet
    Trumpet (novel)
    Trumpet is the debut novel of Scottish writer and poet Jackie Kay.-Author:Kay has two published collections of poetry: Other Lovers and The Adoption of Papers. Other Lovers won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1994. She currently resides in England...

    (Fiction - 1998
    1998 in literature
    The year 1998 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*March 5 - Tennessee Williams' 1938 play, Not About Nightingales, receives its stage première....

    )
  • The Frog who dreamed she was an Opera Singer (1998)
  • Two's Company (1992)
  • Why Don't You Stop Talking (Fiction - 2002
    2002 in literature
    The year 2002 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*March 16: Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested and jailed poet Abdul Mohsen Musalam and fired a newspaper editor following the publication of Musalam's poem The Corrupt on Earth that criticized the state's Islamic...

    )
  • Strawgirl (2002)
  • Life Mask (Poetry - 2005)
  • Wish I Was Here (Fiction - 2006
    2006 in literature
    The year 2006 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Literature:*Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun*Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital *Martin Amis - House of Meetings...

    )
  • The Lamplighter (2007)
  • Red Cherry Red (2007)
  • Darling (2007)
  • Maw Broon Monologues (2009) (shortlisted for the Ted Hughes
    Ted Hughes
    Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...

     Award for New Work in Poetry)
  • Red Dust Road (2010)
  • Fiere (Poetry - 2011)


Some other poetry used in GCSE Edexcel Syllabus
  • Brendon Gallacher
  • Lucozade
  • Yellow

External links

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