Kit de Waal

Multiple-award-winning author Kit de Waal was born in Birmingham to an Irish mother who was a childminder and foster carer and a Caribbean father.She worked for fifteen years in criminal and family law, was a magistrate for several years and sits on adoption panels. She used to advise Social Services on the care of foster children, and has written training manuals on adoption, foster care and judgecraft for members of the judiciary.Her first novel My Name Is Leon was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. Kit spent her first advance on establishing a creative writing scholarship at Birkbeck College for a working-class student, and later crowdfunded Common People, an anthology of working class memoir by new and established writers.In 2018 she published The Trick to Time, and followed this up a year later with her first YA novel, Becoming Dinah. Her short story collection Supporting Cast was published in 2020.Kit's writing has received numerous awards including the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2014 and 2015 and the SI Leeds Literary Reader's Choice Prize 2014 and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.Kit is a co-founder of the Primadonna festival and the Big Book Weekend, set up in response to the Covid-19 crisis. In 2019 she was named Future Book Person of the Year.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-world-as-it-should-be. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.