Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay (born 1961) is a powet and novelist.

She was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted by a white couple, and grew up in Bishopbriggs, ast Dunbartonshire, a suburb of Edinburgh. She studied English at the University of Stirling. Her first book of poetry, the partially autobiographical The Adoption Papers, was published in 1991 and won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award. Her other awards include the 1994 Somerset Maugham Award for Other Lovers, and the Guardian First Book Award Fiction Prize for Trumpet, based on the life of American jazz musician Billy Tipton, born Dorothy Tipton, who lived as a man for the last fifty years of his life.

Jackie Kay received an MBE in 2006. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and lives in Manchester.

She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty-Six Books, with a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible.