The next lecture:
Professor Glyn Turton Lecture 2020 CANCELLED
Unfortunately, in light of national and global developments, the Professor Glyn Turton Lecture can no longer take place as planned on Friday 15th May 2020.
Please accept our apologies for this disappointing news, the Department of English was very much looking forward to welcoming Jackie Kay and introducing her lecture.
About the speaker
Jackie Kay is a highly- acclaimed novelist, short story writer and poet, who has received numerous awards and prizes for her writing and in 2016 became Scots Makar, poet laureate of Scotland.
Her first poetry collection, The Adoption Papers (1991) won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award and her second collection, Other Lovers (1994) won the Somerset Maugham Award.
In 1998, her debut novel, Trumpet, won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was then successfully adapted for the stage and performed in Glasgow in 2005, and more recently, this year, for BBC Radio 4.
Kay has also published three collections of short stories, Why Don’t You Stop Talking (2002), Wish I Was Here (2006) and, most recently, Reality, Reality (2012).
Her memoir, Red Dust Road (2011) was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackley Prize and won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year. Kay’s memoir was later adapted for stage by Tanika Gupta and produced by the National Theatre of Scotland
Kay is also an accomplished playwright herself, and her drama exploring aspects of the Atlantic Slave Trade, The Lamplighter, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2007 and then published in verse form a year later.
Kay’s two latest collections of poetry, Fiere (2011) and BANTAM (2017) both explore senses of place, identity and home – which inform the focus of her lecture.
She has profiles on the Scottish Poetry Library and British Council websites, and she tweets at @JackieKayPoet
