Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay is one of Britain’s most loved and lauded poets. She is also a playwright and writer, and from 2016 until 2021 was Scotland’s makar, the national poet for Scotland. Her unique and emotive work spans race, gender and identity, woven with tenderness and humour, often drawing from her own unusual beginnings.

Jackie recounts her extraordinary life story: born to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father, she was adopted as a baby by Helen and John Kay, active Communist Party members whose passion for politics and a fairer society fuelled Jackie’s path in life and her writing. Reflecting on her journey from adopted child to award-winning poet, she recounts the adversity she has experienced, from childhood racism to the long and emotional journey to find her birth parents and the more recent process of grieving her much-loved adoptive parents, whose death signalled the end of a chapter in Jackie’s life. Throughout this path to find herself, Jackie has used words and literature as a way to capture and process her story.