Jackie Kay

Standard Name: Kay, Jackie
Birth Name: Jacqueline Margaret Kay
Nickname: Jackie
JK 's poetry, plays, and fiction explore issues of divided, displaced, or mixed identity. Her writings probe and challenge assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality with a mixture of pain and humour. She often draws her inspiration from jazz and blues musicians, particularly Bessie Smith and Billy Tipton . JK has also written a memoir about her search for her birth parents, and several children's books, as well as works for radio drama and performance poetry), opera, and audiocassette.
Photo of Jackie Kay taken during the annual Edinburgh International Book Festival. She is wearing brown tinted glasses and a dress with small polka-squares that matches her earrings. she has short black hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Jeanette Winterson
Her contributors included Ali Smith on Beethoven 's Fidelio, Anne Enright on Dvorak 's Rusalka, Jackie Kay on Janacek 's The Makropulos Case, Joanna Trollope on Donizetti 's L'Elisir d'Amore, Kate Atkinson
Friends, Associates Ali Smith
Kasia Boddy , an academic collaborator with Smith and Wood, features quite prominently in the introduction to Smith's short-story collection The First Person—fittingly, given her academic specialization in the short story. AS also numbers...
Textual Production Ali Smith
In August at the Edinburgh International Book Festival , three months before publication, AS stated her concern for the future of the public library system itself. As a narrative thread, she collected personal oral library...
Textual Features Ali Smith
Among the novel's most remarkable scenes is the moment of sexual intercourse between Robin and Anthea. In what Jackie Kay has called the best sex I've read in years, Smith avoids the basic corporeality of...
Literary responses Ali Smith
Jackie Kay included Girl Meets Boy in her list of favourite books from 2007. In comparing Smith's version of Iphis and Ianthe with Fleur Adcock 's contribution to Hofmann and Lasdun 's After Ovid: New...
Literary responses Ali Smith
Reviews of Autumn were overwhelmingly positive and generally quite taken with the timeliness of its subject-matter. Joanna Kavenna called it a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities, while Laura Miller observed that...
Textual Features Ali Smith
This volume, themed around eruptions of conflict between lovers, features short-story selections from Jhumpa Lahiri , Jackie Kay , D. H. Lawrence , Katherine Mansfield , Dorothy Parker , and Grace Paley (as in the...
Textual Production Winsome Pinnock
The National Theatre (Cottesloe) put on an arresting play for young people by WP entitled Can You Keep a Secret?, part of the New Connections season of plays for the young.
Launched a couple...
Textual Production Ruth Padel
This poem was reprinted in Angel. Other poets to appear in this series, each on a different coloured sheet of paper, were Carol Ann Duffy , Judi Benson , Anne Born , Carole Coates
Literary responses Ruth Padel
Her election was marred by unpleasantness. Another of the three short-listed candidates, Caribbean poet Derek Walcott , withdrew from the competition after a letter-writing campaign brought to the attention of potential voters the fact that...
Textual Production Grace Nichols
GN , along with poets Barbara Burford , Gabriela Pearse , and Jackie Kay , published a poetry collection entitled A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets.
Sander, Reinhard, and Bernth Lindfors, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 157. Gale Research.
235
Anthologization Grace Nichols
GN 's poetry has appeared in a number of further anthologies. These include Six Women Poets (1992), edited by Judith Kinsman , which has an introduction by GN . Penguin Modern Poets Volume 8 (1996)...
Anthologization Liz Lochhead
As well as reading her poetry at festivals and other venues, LL has selected and edited for Mslexia magazine in early 2004 a number of stories and poems on the theme of ice.
Lochhead, Liz. “Ice”. Mslexia, Vol.
20
, pp. 26-7.
26ff
Her...
Textual Features Carol Ann Duffy
The sixty poets were each commissioned for a poem marking a particular year. They included Gillian Clarke (1955: Running Away to the Sea), Ruth Fainlight (1963: World Events), Liz Lochhead (1966: Photograph, Art...
Intertextuality and Influence Carol Ann Duffy
Scottish poet Jackie Kay acknowledges CAD 's help and encouragement in her poetry collection The Adoption Papers, 1991.
Rees-Jones, Deryn. Carol Ann Duffy. Northcote House.
17

Timeline

1810: Saartjie Baartman, later known as the Hottentot...

Building item

1810

Saartjie Baartman , later known as the Hottentot Venus, sailed from Cape Town in South Africa for London, where she had been led to believe she could make her fortune by exhibiting herself.

About October 1973: The Women's Theatre Group (still in being...

Women writers item

About October 1973

The Women's Theatre Group (still in being as the Sphinx Theatre Company ) was founded in London as a feminist and socialist theatre group; its twin organization the Women's Theatre Company proved short-lived.

Early 1975: Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company was founded...

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Early 1975

Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company was founded as a result of plans by a London co-operative community arts resource centre, Inter-Action , for a season of gay plays to follow their successful women's season.

26 November 1998: Poems written, read, and discussed by Kathleen...

Women writers item

26 November 1998

Poems written, read, and discussed by Kathleen Jamie , Jackie Kay , and two male poets were issued as number one in the audio-cassette series Poetry Quartets.

Before mid-September 2004: Melanie Abrahams of literary agency Renaissance...

Writing climate item

Before mid-September 2004

Melanie Abrahams of literary agency Renaissance One organised a group photo of people of Afro, Caribbean, or Asian origin who make a significant contribution to contemporary British literature.

June 2006: Picador Books launched a new series, Picador...

Writing climate item

June 2006

Picador Books launched a new series, Picador Shots, of short stories issued as free-standing volumes. One of the first was Jackie Kay 's Sonata, about two strangers talking on a train.

20 June to 7 July 2016: British poets Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke,...

Building item

20 June to 7 July 2016

British poets Carol Ann Duffy , Gillian Clarke , Imtiaz Dharker , and Jackie Kay , and musician John Sampson , went on a Shore to Shore Nationwide Poetry Tour .

Texts

Burford, Barbara et al. A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets. Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1984.
Kay, Jackie. “A return to grass roots”. The Guardian, pp. Review 4 - 5.
Kay, Jackie. “Afterword to Chiaroscuro”. Lesbian Plays, edited by Jill Davis, Methuen, 1987, pp. 82-3.
Kay, Jackie. Bessie Smith. Absolute, 1997.
Kay, Jackie. “Boke”. Mslexia, No. 79, pp. 46-7.
Kay, Jackie. “Chiaroscuro”. Lesbian Plays, edited by Jill Davis, Methuen, 1987, pp. 57-81.
Kay, Jackie et al. Christian Sanderson: A Poem. Editor Rae, Simon, Clarion, 1996.
Kay, Jackie. Fiere. Pan Macmillan Picador, 2011.
Kay, Jackie. Life Mask. Bloodaxe Books, 2005.
Kay, Jackie. “My other dad is an African prince”. The Observer, pp. New Review 10 - 13.
Kay, Jackie. “New Writing. Women’s Short Story Competition 2011”. Mslexia, No. 49, pp. 27-8.
Kay, Jackie. Off Colour. Bloodaxe Books, 1998.
Kay, Jackie. Other Lovers. Bloodaxe Books, 1993.
Kay, Jackie. “Poems on war: Jackie Kay is inspired by Siegfried Sassoon”. theguardian.com.
Kay, Jackie. “Poets on tour: reeling after the referendum”. theguardian.com.
Kay, Jackie. Red Dust Road. Pan Macmillan, 2010.
Kay, Jackie. “Sailing on Two Boats: Second Generation Perspectives, 1993”. Ethnic Communities Oral History Project: Hammersmith and Fulham Studies Centre, London: Community History Series 11: 2-6, Ethnic Communities Oral History Project, pp. 2-6.
Kay, Jackie. “Short story endings”. Mslexia, Vol.
20
, pp. 44-5.
Kay, Jackie. That Distance Apart. Turret Books, 1991.
Kay, Jackie. The Adoption Papers. Bloodaxe Books, 1991.
Kay, Jackie, and Sue Williams. The Frog Who Dreamed She Was an Opera Singer. Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 1998.
Kay, Jackie. The Lamplighter. Bloodaxe, 2008.
Kay, Jackie. “Threshold”. Scottish Poetry Library.
Kay, Jackie. Trumpet. Picador, 1998.
Kay, Jackie. “Twice Over”. Gay Sweatshop: Four Plays and a Company, edited by Philip Osment, Methuen Drama, 1989, pp. 121-46.