Jackie Kay (born in Edinburgh, Scotland) is a Scottish poet, novelist, and playwright and the national makar (Poet Laureate) of Scotland since 2016. Born to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, she was adopted as an infant by a white couple from Glasgow. Her debut collection The Adoption Papers (Bloodaxe, 1991), which won a Forward Prize, a Saltire Award, and a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, recounts the experience of adoption in three interwoven voices. Her later collections include Fiere (Picador, 2011), winner of the Costa Poetry Award. She has received the British Book Awards Author of the Year and an OBE. She is a professor of creative writing at Newcastle University.