"The story of lesbian playwright, novelist and poet Jackie Kay's life is as fascinating as her literary works. Jackie Kay MBE was born in Scotland 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, and this experience inspired her award-winning first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers.

Subsequent collections have also gone on to win numerous literary awards including Other Lovers - inspired and influenced by the history of Afro-Caribbean people, which include a sequence of poems about bisexual blues-singer Bessie Smith. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, and she has written widely for stage and television."