Born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, author Kit de Waal grew up in Birmingham, England. She came to full-time writing later in life and was 55 when her debut novel My Name is Leon was published.
My Name is Leon won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2017 and became an international bestseller.
Kit’s second novel, The Trick to Time, was longlisted for The Women’s Prize. Her first Young Adult novel, Becoming Dinah, published in 2019, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Kit de Waal is 2021 Writer in Residence on the MA Creative Writing course at the University of Limerick.