1. Jackie Kay has won many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1994, the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.
16 Facts About Jackie Kay
1. 2.
From 2016 to 2021, Jackie Kay was the Makar, the poet laureate of Scotland.
3.
Jackie Kay was Chancellor of the University of Salford between 2015 and 2022.
4.
Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1961, to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father.
5.
Jackie Kay was adopted as a baby by a white Scottish couple, Helen and John Kay, and grew up in Bishopbriggs, a suburb of Glasgow.
6.
Jackie Kay has siblings who were brought up by her biological parents.
7.
Jackie Kay 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 and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1992.
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Liz Lochhead 8.
In 1997, Jackie Kay published a biography of blues singer Bessie Smith; it was reissued in 2021.
9.
Jackie Kay writes extensively for stage, screen and for children.
10.
Jackie Kay's drama The Lamplighter is an exploration of the Atlantic slave trade.
11.
In 2010 Jackie Kay 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.
12.
Jackie Kay is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and Cultural Fellow at Glasgow Caledonian University.
13.
Jackie Kay took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, her piece being based on the book of Esther from the King James Bible.
14.
In March 2016, Jackie Kay was announced as the next Scots Makar, succeeding Liz Lochhead, whose tenure ended in January 2016.
15.
Jackie Kay was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2006 Birthday Honours for services to literature, and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year Honours, again for services to literature.
16.
Jackie Kay was on the list of the BBC's 100 Women announced on 23 November 2020.