Jackie Kay Named New Scottish Makar

The Guardian reports that Scottish writer Jackie Kay has been named the country's new "makar," also known as the national poet. Kay told the paper that, "particularly since the upsurge in political engagement after the 2014 independence referendum campaign, this was 'an extraordinary time to be Scottish.'" She is the third poet to take the post since it was established in 2004, succeeding Liz Lochhead and her mentor Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s first makar. More:

The writer, who divides her time between Manchester and Glasgow, won the Guardian fiction prize in 1998 for her first novel, Trumpet, and was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2006. Her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers, was published in 1991 and was named Scottish First Book of the Year. She is currently the chancellor of Salford University.

Kay has always explored themes of identity and belonging through her writing. Trumpet tells the story of a jazz musician who, after his death, is revealed to have been a woman.

In her best-selling memoir, Red Dust Road, Kay describes the search for her birth parents – a young nurse from the Highlands and a Nigerian student at Aberdeen University in the early sixties.

Born in Edinburgh in 1961, Kay was adopted by a white communist couple and brought up in Glasgow, later discussing the rarity at that time of being a mixed-race child brought up by white parents.

Kay remains close to her former partner, and current UK poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, with whom she lived in Manchester for more than a decade with their two children.

The final selection of Kay as makar was made from a shortlist by the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and former first ministers Alex Salmond, Jack McConnell and Henry McLeish.

Announcing the appointment, Sturgeon saluted Kay’s “particular Scottish brand of gallus humour”.

Read all about it at the Guardian.