Kit de Waal
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Kit de Waal LIVE appeared live at ALSO25, courtesy of the foundation, discussing her unforgettable and gorgeously redemptive book, The Best of Everything - a novel about the love that can steal into our lives, in spite of the best laid plans. Kit is a bestselling, prize-winning author of the novels My Name Is Leon (which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and recently adapted as a film for BBC Two), The Trick to Time (which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction), a short story collection, Supporting Cast, the memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes (which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the Irish Book Awards). She is also editor of the Common People anthology, and co-founder of the Big Book Weekend festival.
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 sat 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 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.
MY NAME IS LEON, her first novel was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. She has two children and lives in the West Midlands.