University of Stirling

Jackie Kay MBE is a Scottish poet and novelist. Jackie Kay was born in Glasgow in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted... by a Scottish white couple, Helen and John Kay, and grew up in Bishopbriggs, a suburb of Glasgow. Kay was brought up in a 1950s-built Glasgow housing estate in a small Wimpey house, which her adoptive parents had bought new in 1957. They adopted Kay in 1961 having already adopted Jackie's brother, Maxwell, about two years earlier. Jackie and Maxwell also have siblings who were brought up by the genetic parents. Kay's adoptive father worked for the Communist Party full-time and stood for Member of Parliament, and her adoptive mother was the Scottish secretary of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In August 2007 Kay was the subject of the fourth episode of The House I Grew Up In, in which she talked about a happy childhood in a stimulating, albeit unconventional, home. Initially harbouring ambitions to be an actress, she decided to concentrate on writing after Alasdair Gray, a Scottish artist and writer, read her poetry and told her that writing was what she should be doing.
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