Meet the Author with Kit De Waal

A monthly opportunity to hear our favourite authors talk about their writing journey, their process, what they’re currently working on, and answer your questions!

Save the date. Cancel your plans. Join us live. Can’t believe we have the force of nature that is Kit De Waal joining us for Meet the Author this April. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this! Kit is such a supportive and vocal talent with a huge heart. She has written for radio, television, adults and young adults. But Kit didn’t start writing until her mid-forties. Her debut breakthrough novel, the heart-breaking My Name is Leon, was published in 2016 and shortlisted for numerous awards including the Costa first novel award, and became an international bestseller. In 2022 it was adapted for television by the BBC. Kit donated some of her advance for My Name is Leon to create a scholarship to the MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck for low income or other marginalised backgrounds.

In 2019 Kit crowdfunded and edited an anthology of working-class memoirs, Common People, and was named FutureBook Person of the Year in the same year. Her second novel, The Trick to Time, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and her young adult novel Becoming Dinah was shortlisted for the Carnegie CLIP Award 2020. Her collection of short stories, Supporting Cast, was published in 2020.

Kit wrote two episodes of the HBO/Sky series The Third Day (2020), and is the founder of her own TV production company, Portopia Productions, and the free digital literary festival, the Big Book Weekend. In 2025, she was Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction – considered the greatest celebration of female creativity in the world. She is a patron of the Bridport Prize, the Met Film School, Prisoners Abroad and Writing West Midlands, as well as an ambassador of Well-being in the Arts, and Bookbanks, and a trustee of The Reading Agency. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor and Jean Humphreys Writer in Residence at Leicester University.

Kit’s memoir, Without Warning and Only Sometimes, was published in 2022. Her novel Best of Everything as published in April of last year.

Kit is an amazing person to meet in person, but I can’t Uber her around to you all, so this is a Meet the Author not to miss!