SWC: In Process Masterclass Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay was born to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted by a white couple at birth and was brought up in Glasgow. The experience of being adopted by and growing up within a white family inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers (1991). The collection won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award and a commendation by the Forward Poetry Prize judges in 1992.

Her first novel, Trumpet, published in 1998, was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Inspired by the life of musician Billy Tipton, the novel tells the story of Scottish jazz trumpeter Joss Moody whose death revealed that he was, in fact, a woman.

Her books, Why Don’t You Stop Talking (2002), Wish I Was Here (2006), and Reality, Reality (2012) are collections of short stories, and she has also published a novel for children, Strawgirl (2002). Her latest books are Red Dust Road (2010), a memoir about meeting her Nigerian birth father, which won the 2011 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the 2011 PEN/Ackerley Prize; and Fiere (2011), a new collection of poetry, shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Poetry Award and the 2011 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award.

In 2006, she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.