On my radar: Jackie Kay's cultural highlights

The Scottish poet laureate on the joy of Bridgerton, her lifelong love of Ella Fitzgerald, and an inventive Shakespearean memoir

Jackie Kay is a Scottish poet, novelist and writer born in 1961 in Edinburgh. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, short story collections and novels. Her first book of poetry, The Adoption Papers, published in 1991, won the Saltire Society Scottish first book award and she has been Scotland’s national poet laureate since 2016. Her debut novel, The Trumpet, won the Guardian fiction prize in 1998. Later this month, Bessie Smith, Kay’s portrait of the American blues singer, is being rereleased by Faber with a new introduction.