Showing results by author "Jackie Kay" in All Categories

Bessie 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. 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.

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. 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. 

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realises 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, the courageous revelatory journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

May Day is the long-awaited collection from one of our best-loved poets and former Makar of Scotland, Jackie Kay. As the title suggests, these poems cast an eye over several decades of political activism, from the international solidarity of the Glasgow of Kay’s childhood, accompanying her parents’ Socialist campaigns, through the feminist, LGBT+ and anti-racist movements of the 80s and 90s, up to the present day when a global pandemic intersects with the urgency of Black Lives Matter.

Jackie Kay's first collection as Scottish Makar is an audiobook 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 embody our times, whether we want to or not.

This is a book about memories, love, sex and the power of the imagination to see us through the most difficult times. The women of Reality, Reality are mesmerising, whether in love or in solitude. Jackie Kay’s newest and most luminous of collections is full of compassion, generosity, sorrow, and joy. In 15 extraordinary stories, she celebrates the richness and power of dream-life to inspire, to repair, and to make real.

Wish I was Here features tales of passion and jealousy, lust and romance from the award-winning author of Red Dust Road. This fierce, funny, and compassionate collection explores every facet of that most overwhelming and complicated of human emotions: love. With winning directness, Jackie Kay captures her characters' greatest joys and greatest vulnerabilities, exposing the moments of tenderness, of shock, of bravery, and of stupidity that accompany the search for love, the discovery of love and, most of all, love's loss.

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. Jackie Kay sees the extraordinary in everyday life, and lights it up with humour and generosity in a way that is uniquely her own.

Buck Horton's brother was an outlaw. The only thing he left Buck of any value was a secret, the hiding place of stolen gold. Buck vowed to find the gold or die trying. And on the latter, men on both sides of the law are more than willing to oblige him.

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.