Jackie Kay is the current Makar, the Scottish national poet, whose 2010 memoir, Red Dust Road, is to be adapted for the stage by Tanika Gupta for a co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland and HOME Manchester, which will open at the Edinburgh International Festival in August 2019.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Jackie at HOME Manchester about the subject of her book, her quest to find her birth parents (she was adopted as a baby and brought up in Glasgow), one in Scotland and the other in Nigeria, and what she is hoping for from the adaptation.

Red Dust Road is published by Picador. The production will open at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre from 14 to 18 August 2019 before touring to Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling, Eden Court Theatre in Inverness and finishing at HOME Manchester from 11 to 21 September.