AWARD winning novelist, playwright and poet Jackie Kay will be appearing in the flesh at Grasmere next week.

Scots-born Jackie is the latest in a line of artists to attend the Summer Poetry Readings at Grasmere, courtesy of The Wordsworth Trust.

Kay, whose books include the Forward Prize winning The Adoption Papers, 1991, has just produced a new collection of short stories - Why don't you stop talking, 2002.

Born in Edinburgh, in 1961, to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, she was adopted by a white couple at birth and was brought up in Glasgow

The experience of being adopted by and growing up within a white family inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers, 1991. The poems deal with an adopted child's search for a cultural identity and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award and a commendation by the Forward Poetry Prize judges in 1992.

Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, and she has written widely for stage and television. Her first novel, Trumpet, published in 1998, was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Now based in Manchester she has also published a novel for children, Strawgirl.

Kay will read at the Prince of Wales Suite, Thistle Hotel, Grasmere, on Tuesday, May 20, at 6.30pm, Tickets £5 at the door £4 if pre-booked.

For details contact 015394-35544.

May 15, 2003 10:00