Spotlight on Kit de Waal

Kit de Waal is an award-winning writer whose novels place ordinary people at the centre of the story. Her debut novel,My Name is Leon(2016), was the winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2017 and shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize, among others. Before beginning writing professionally, Kit worked for fifteen years in criminal and family law and has also sat on adoption panels and advised Social Services on the care of foster children. Kit has frequently advocated for working class writers and in 2016 she launched the Kit de Waal scholarship at Birkbeck, providing a fully-funded place on Birkbeck’s part-time MA Creative Writing to a talented student who otherwise would not be able to afford to participate. Kit’s second novel, The Trick to Time, was published in March 2018 and longlisted for The Women’s Prize.  Her first YA novel, Becoming Dinah will be be published in July for Hachette.  She has also crowdfunded Common Peoplean anthology of working class memoir by new and established writers, published in May.

Kit will be doing some readings at this year’s festival as well as a workshop called ‘How To Write Flash Fiction’.