Biography
Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. She has published five collections of poetry for adults – THE ADOPTION PAPERS (winner of a Forward Prize, a Saltire Award and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award.), OTHER LOVERS (which won the Somerset Maugham Award), OFF COLOUR (shortlisted for the 1999 TS Eliot Award), LIFE MASK and DARLING, New and Selected Poems (both Poetry Book Society Recommendations.)
Her first novel, TRUMPET (Picador, 1998) won the Guardian Fiction Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and The Author’s Club First Novel Award. It was also on the shortlist for the IMPAC award.
Her new collection of short stories, WISH I WAS HERE won the Decibel Writer of the Year award. She is a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Her new collection of poetry for children, RED, CHERRY RED was published by Bloomsbury and won the CLPE award in 2008. Her memoir RED DUST ROAD was published this year by Picador to great acclaim and was a BBC Book of the Week. Her new collection of poems, FIERE, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She lives in Manchester with her son.
Interview
How does it feel to see your work in front of an audience?
That really depends on whether you feel the production seems to reflect what you had in your own imagination. When that happens, it’s hugely satisfying and there is no feeling like it. That process depends on all the different elements involved in a production, direction, design, lighting, sound and all of those elements. It’s a kind of weird kind of alchemy that can bring all those things together in the right way. When THE ADOPTION PAPERS and STRAWGIRL were done at the Royal Exchange by Sarah Frankcom, I was delighted. I thought Sarah’s direction was psychologically astute and the actors were brilliant and surprising. I also loved the way that Amanda Dalton adapted STRAWGIRL from my original novel.
What advice would you give to a writer about to start on the journey of writing something for the competition?
It’s important to make your language as lively as possible and to remember that dialogue isn’t just about how people speak. I would advise any writer to follow his or her path because that’s the way to create something real, original and fresh. To write in your own tongue produces the best kind of work. I think it’s also useful to consider the way theatre works as a structure, that you need an imaginative vision for how to make your play dramatic and compelling. It’s hard to have a story up and running in the now of the moment and make people want to watch what happens next. So much of it is to do with being true to your own original idea, but also being open to the suggestions of others, the director, the actor, to remember that once you’ve written your play you are part of a team.
