Search results for ""author jackie kay""

Celebrating Fifty Years of Picador BooksYou think adoption is a story which has an end. But the point about it is that it has no end. It keeps changing its ending.From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, Jackie Kay’s journey in Red Dust Road is one of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions. In a book remarkable for its warmth and candour, Kay discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that what triumphs, ultimately, is love.Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.‘Like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Red Dust Road is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read’ – IndependentPart of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.

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Jackie Kay’s first collection as Scottish Makar is a book about the fighting spirit – one, the poet argues, that we need now more than ever. Bantam brings three generations into sharp focus – Kay’s own, her father’s, and his own father’s – to show us how the body holds its own story. Kay shows how old injuries can emerge years later; how we bear and absorb the loss of friends; how we celebrate and welcome new life; and how we how we embody our times, whether we want to or not. Bantam crosses borders, from Rannoch Moor to the Somme, from Brexit to Bronte country. Who are we? Who might we want to be? These are poems that sing of what connects us, and lament what divides us; poems that send daylight into the dark that threatens to overwhelm us – and could not be more necessary to the times in which we live.

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‘Ambitious, defiant, angry and gripping . . . the bitter story of slavery through the experience of four women’ Guardian'Jackie Kay’s work, formally expansive and inclusive . . . is always about the opening up of our notions of identity' Ali Smith, author of How to Be BothIn The Lamplighter award-winning poet and Scottish Makar Jackie Kay takes us on a journey into the dark heart of Britain’s legacy in the slave trade.First produced as a play, on the page it reads as a profound and tragic multi-layered poem. We watch as four women and one man tell the story of their lives through slavery, from the fort, to the slave ship, through the middle passage, following life on the plantations, charting the growth of the British city and the industrial revolution. Constance has witnessed the sale of her own child; Mary has been beaten to an inch of her life; Black Harriot has been forced to sell her body; and our lead, the Lamplighter, was sold twice into slavery from the ports in Bristol. Their different voices sing together in a rousing chorus that speaks to the experiences of all those brutalised by slavery, and lifts in the end to a soaring and powerful conclusion. Stirring, impassioned and deeply affecting, The Lamplighter remains as essential today as the day it was first performed. This is an essential work by one of our most beloved writers.

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Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple, from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter. The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2022 The Adoption Papers was selected as one of ten books representing the 1990s in The Big Jubilee Read, a celebration of great books from across the Commonwealth to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, one of only three poetry collections out of 70 books on the list.

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Humour, Gender, Sexuality, Sensuality, Identity, Racism, and Cultural Difference. When do any of these things ever come together to equal poetry? When Jackie Kay's part of the equation. "Darling" brings together into a vibrant new book many favourite poems from her four Bloodaxe collections, "The Adoption Papers", "Other Lovers", "Off Colour" and "Life Mask", as well as featuring new work, some previously uncollected poems, and some lively poetry for younger readers. Kay's poems draw on her own life and the lives of others to make a tapestry of voice and communal understanding. The title of her acclaimed short story collection, "Why Don't You Stop Talking", could be a comment on her own poems, their urgency of voice and their recognition of the urgency in all voice, particularly the need to be heard, to have voice. And what voice - the voices of the everyday, the voices of jazz, the voices of this many-voiced United Kingdom.

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*Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize*‘Rich, taut and compelling’ – Melvyn Bragg, The Guardian‘An accomplished display of vocal versatility’ – The Literary ReviewThe death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret. Unknown to all but his wife Millie, Joss was a woman living as a man. The discovery is most devastating for their adopted son, Colman, whose bewildered fury brings the press to the doorstep and sends his grieving mother to the sanctuary of a remote Scottish village.Part of the Picador Collection, Trumpet by Jackie Kay is a starkly beautiful modern classic about the lengths to which people will go for love. It is a moving story of a shared life founded on an intricate lie, of loving deception and lasting devotion, and of the intimate workings of the human heart.‘Kay carefully registers the technical difficulties of transgendere

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The women of Reality, Reality are mesmerizing, whether in love or in solitude. Full of compassion, generosity, sorrow and joy, their fifteen unforgettable stories explore the power of the imagination to make things real, and celebrate, most of all, those who dare to dream.

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‘A stunner. I am heartbroken to have finished it’ Ali Smith In Jackie Kay’s first collection of stories, ordinary lives are transformed by secrets. Her world might seem familiar – sex, death and family cast long shadows – but the roles of mothers, daughters and lovers are imagined and revealed in the most surprising of ways. Sometimes it is the things that we choose to hide within ourselves which can transform us – and that has never been more true than in Jackie Kay’s warm, exuberant storytelling. She sees the extraordinary in everyday life, and lights it up with humour and generosity in a way that is uniquely her own. ‘If stories like these can still be written, the short story form must still be alive, not to say kicking’ Irish Times

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A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKBessie Smith: singer, icon, pioneer. Scotland's National Poet Jackie Kay brings to life the tempestuous story of the greatest blues singer who ever lived. 'A gem of a book . . . beautiful.' BERNARDINE EVARISTO'A wonderful writer on a magnificent singer.' ROBERT WYATT'Kay's book is the amplifier that Smith's voice deserves.' SUNDAY TIMES'The most vivid evocation of Bessie Smith I have ever read.' IAN CARR, BBC MUSICBESSIE SMITH was born in Tennessee in 1894. Orphaned by the age of nine, she sang on street corners before becoming a big name in travelling shows. In 1923 she made her first recording for a new start-up called Columbia Records. It sold 780,000 copies and made her a star. Smith's life was notoriously difficult: she drank pints of 'bathtub gin', got into violent fist fights, spent huge sums of money and had passionate love affairs with men and women. She once single-handedly fought off a cohort of the Ku Klux Klan.As a young black girl growing up in Glasgow, Jackie Kay found in Bessie someone with whom she could identify and who she could idolise. In this remarkable book Kay mixes biography, fiction, poetry and prose to create an enthralling account of an extraordinary life. 'Biographies don't usually bring the subject to life again. This one did. I finished the book then started it again immediately.' PEGGY SEEGER'What a life! What gulpable storytelling! Exactly the kind of writing about music we need: personal, ardent, playfully confrontational, questioning, undogmatic. A love song to a complicated idol.'KATE MOLLESON'Pure joy: one trailblazing woman pays tribute to another. Jackie Kay finds the music in the short, dazzling, capricious life of Bessie Smith.'HELEN LEWIS

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Jackie Kay’s new collection is a lyric counterpart to her memoir, Red Dust Road, the extraordinary story of the search for her Nigerian and Highland birth-parents; but it is also a moving book in its own right, and a deep enquiry into all forms of human friendship. Fiere – Scots for ‘companion, friend, equal’ – is a vivid description of the many paths our lives take, and of how those journeys are made meaningful by our companions on the road: lovers, friends, parents, children, mentors – as well as all the remarkable and chance acquaintances we would not otherwise have made. Written with Kay’s trademark wit and flair, and infused with both Scots and Igbo speech, it is also a fascinating account of the formation of a self-identity – and the discovery of a tongue that best honours it. Musical and moving, funny and profound, Fiere is Jackie Kay’s most accomplished, assured and ambitious collection of poems to date.

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Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh. A poet, novelist and writer of short stories, she has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both adults and children. Her novel, Trumpet, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. She has published three collections of stories with Picador, Why Don't You Stop Talking, Wish I Was Here, and Reality, Reality; three poetry collections, Fiere, Bantam, and May Day; and her memoir, Red Dust Road. From 2016 to 2021 she was the third modern Makar, National Poet for Scotland. She lives in Manchester and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Salford.

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Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, Trumpet by Jackie Kay is a starkly beautiful modern classic about the lengths to which people will go for love. It is a moving story of a shared life founded on an intricate lie, of loving deception and lasting devotion, and of the intimate workings of the human heart.With an introduction by author Ali Smith.When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive.The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret. Unbeknown to all but his wife Millie, Joss was a woman living as a man. The discovery is most devastating for their adopted son, Colman, whose bewildered fury brings the press to the doorstep and sends his grieving mother to the sanctuary of a remote Scottish village.'Kay carefully registers the technical difficulties of transgendered life . . . She leaves us with a broad landscape of sweet tolerance and familial love' – New York Times

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Jackie Kay’s first collection as Scottish Makar is a book about the fighting spirit – one, the poet argues, that we need now more than ever. Bantam brings three generations into sharp focus – Kay’s own, her father’s, and his own father’s – to show us how the body holds its own story. Kay shows how old injuries can emerge years later; how we bear and absorb the loss of friends; how we celebrate and welcome new life; and how we how we embody our times, whether we want to or not. Bantam crosses borders, from Rannoch Moor to the Somme, from Brexit to Bronte country. Who are we? Who might we want to be? These are poems that sing of what connects us, and lament what divides us; poems that send daylight into the dark that threatens to overwhelm us – and could not be more necessary to the times in which we live.

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A powerful poetry collection full of the drama, musicality and lyricism that Jackie Kay is famed for. Exploring the themes of identity and age, this collection includes poems about the old days and the new days, and the places associated with an older generation, who often live dreamlike, isolated existences – not only geographically, but also in the memory. Nature and the elements play a big role too: trees, the moon, the sea, fire. Jackie Kay's style is one moment witty, the next melancholic, or gently surreal – and in this brilliant reissued collection, her poems are infused with warmth and colour: in particular, the colour RED. Perfect for fans of The Gift by Carol Ann Duffy and Rob Ryan, this gorgeous new gift edition is a must-have for any poetry fan.

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Introduced by Jackie Kay, this selection of poems include the famous ‘Strawberries’ and ‘One Cigarette’ and four from Morgan’s autobiographical sequence, Love and a Life – love in all its aspects.

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Set in the late 1950s, this is the story of Evelyn Hall, an English Professor, who goes to Reno to obtain a divorce and put an end to her disastrous 16-year marriage. While staying at a boarding house to establish her six-week residency requirement she meets Ann Childs, a casino worker and fifteen years her junior. Physically, they are remarkably alike and eventually have an affair and begin the struggle to figure out just how a relationship between two women can last.Desert of the Heart examines the conflict between convention and freedom and the ways in which the characters try to resolve the conflict

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When he was awarded an honorary degree in civil law at Newcastle University in 1967, Dr Martin Luther King gave an electrifying extemporaneous address, speaking without notes, in which he said: 'There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face today...That is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.' As part of a fifty year anniversary and celebration, this anthology gathers poets from both sides of the Atlantic to address the challenges set out by Dr King. It's a shock to think how little has changed, and that Martin Luther King could well be speaking right here, right now. In the spirit of Dr King and his work as a humanitarian and activist, this anthology brings together poems that offer powerful testimonies to the urgent issues Dr King defines and represents the polyphony of voices that speak in resistance to our continuing problems of racism, poverty and war. Featuring poems by Claudia Rankine, Grace Nichols, Yusef Komunyakaa, Moniza Alvi, Rita Dove, Daljit Nagra, Imtiaz Dharker, Fred D'Aguiar, Oliver de la Paz, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, John Agard, Patricia Smith, Jericho Brown, Toi Derricotte, Vahni Capildeo, Carl Phillips, Sarah Howe, Elizabeth Alexander, Ishion Hutchinson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Marilyn Nelson, Mimi Khalvati, Nikki Giovanni, Robert Pinsky, Bernardine Evaristo, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Major Jackson, Tim Seibles, Choman Hardi, Benjamin Zephaniah, Shazea Quraishi, E. Ethelbert Miller, Sandeep Parmar, Malika Booker, Roger Robinson, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Rae Paris, Kendel Hippolyte, Amali Rodrigo, Zaffar Kunial, Rishi Dastidar, Raymond Antrobus, Mai Der Vang, Martin Espada, Inua Ellams, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Gregory Pardlo, Edward Doegar, Degna Stone, MacDonald Dixon, Ada Limon, Philip Metres, Nick Makoha, Nathalie Handal, Lauren K Alleyne, Kevin Bowen, Bashabi Fraser, Satchid Anandan. Co-publication with Newcastle University.

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Upon changing his religion, a young man is denounced as an apostate and flees his country hiding in the back of a freezer lorry… After years of travelling and losing almost everything – his country, his children, his wife, his farm – an Afghan man finds unexpected warmth and comfort in a stranger’s home... A student protester is forced to leave his homeland after a government crackdown, and spends the next 25 years in limbo, trapped in the UK asylum system... Modelled on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the second volume of Refugee Tales sets out to communicate the experiences of those who, having sought asylum in the UK, find themselves indefinitely detained. Here, poets and novelists create a space in which the stories of those who have been detained can be safely heard, a space in which hospitality is the prevailing discourse and listening becomes an act of welcome.

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From Aberdeen to the Isle of Wight, Out of Bounds is a newly charted map of Britain as viewed by its black and Asian poets. It takes the reader on a riveting, sensory journey through Scotland, England and Wales, showing the whole country from a fresh perspective. This extensive and ground-breaking anthology – with its sudden forks in the road, and its roads not taken – stops off in the Highlands and Islands, skirts the North East coast from Whitley Bay to the sands of Bridlington, wanders lonely through the Lake District and Yorkshire, climbs the mountains of Wales before descending to the Black Country and Southern England. Along the way it takes in lochs and landmarks from Glasgow’s George Square and the Angel of the North to the London Eye and the Long Man of Wilmington. If alienation, unbelonging and dislocation remain key aspects of black and Asian experiences in Britain, what such terms simultaneously conceal are the rich and manifold attachments to place, region, city and landscape offered in Out of Bounds. The poems question the idea of an easy or singular identity, nimbly dealing with the triple bind of ethnic, geographical and poetic belonging. An alternative A to Z of the nation, a new poetic guide, the book enables us to look again at the UK’s local and regional landscapes and the poets who pass through them. Out of Bounds is a definitive anthology that brings together new and established black and Asian writers and places them firmly on the map of what is great and not so great about Britain. Includes: Shanta Acharya, John Agard, Patience Agbabi, Moniza Alvi, James Berry, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, Vahni Capildeo, Merle Collins, Fred D'Aguiar, David Dabydeen, Imtiaz Dharker, Bernardine Evaristo, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jackie Kay, Tariq Latif, Sheree Mack, Jack Mapanje, E.A. Markham, Daljit Nagra, Grace Nichols, Louisa Adjoa Parker, Michelle Scally-Clarke, Seni Seneviratne, John Siddique, Lemn Sissay, Dorothea Smartt, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, Benjamin Zephaniah, and many others.

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WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY JACKIE KAY AND LISA JARDINEA village pageant is to take place at Pointz Hall, the country home of the Oliver family for time beyond memory. Written and directed by the energetic Miss La Trobe, the pageant will take in the history of England from the Middle Ages. The past blends with the present and art blends with life in a narrative full of invention, affection and lyricism. Between the Acts was Virginia Woolf's final novel, and this edition contains the original text that she was working on when she died.

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Meet some of Scotland's most spectacular women in this inspiring collection of biographies written for young people. From authors to athletes, scientists to singers, queens to campaigners, this diverse collection of women have influenced the world in incredible ways.Read the eye-opening life stories of many amazing Scottish women you know, and many you won't believe you hadn't heard of:-- Feel the rhythm with ground-breaking deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie-- Rock the runway with model Eunice Olumide-- Command the country with iconic monarch Mary, Queen of Scots-- Pen a literary gem with poet and author Jackie Kay-- Campaign for change with schoolgirl activist Roza Salih-- Step on set with actor Karen Gillan-- Race to the finish line with para-athlete Kayleigh Haggo-- Discover a new planet with scientist Mary SomervilleScottish author and former journalist Louise Baillie presents empowering stories of persistence, achievement, ingenuity and innovation while bestselling Scottish illustrator Eilidh Muldoon captures the essence of each extraordinary woman with her vibrant and dynamic illustrations.This fascinating and uplifting celebration of iconic women from Scotland's past and present is essential reading for children aged seven and up and a perfect gift for the spectacular Scots of the future.

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