
Kit de Waal
'Vivid and compelling and so moving... Kit's depiction of her parents' dynamic is both painful and comforting to read' Marian Keyes
Pre-order here - Without Warning & Only Sometimes Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood
"A childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted, and true.
Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays, worked as a cleaner, nurse and childminder sometimes all at once and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim and splurged money they didn't have on cars, suits and shoes fit for a prince. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came.
Caught between three worlds, Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham, Kit and her brothers and sisters knew all the words to the best songs, caught sticklebacks in jam jars and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape.
WITHOUT WARNING AND ONLY SOMETIMES is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day." - Amazon
PODCAST APPEARANCES
RELATIVELY, About Siblings
Running time: 36:64 min. Broadcast May 3rd 2022.
Episode 41: Kit de Waal & Dean O'Loughlin work as screenwriters together, drawing on their incredible knowledge of classic film, inherited from their father, whose love of cinema was an escape from tougher realities.
JUSTICE, DISRUPTED with Byron Vincent
Running time: 1hr 2 min. Broadcast May 3rd 2022.
In this episode Byron speaks to writer and former magistrate, Kit de Waal. They talk about how Kit's upbringing influenced her choices; her experience of working within the justice system and why compassion is always the answer.
EVENTS - Summer 2022
MAY 25
MAY 28
Adnams Speigeltent,
Festival Gardens, Chapelfield.
Saturday, 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
JUN 1-5
Half Day ‘Crafting Characters’ Memoir Masterclass
24 The Square, Listowel, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Festival runs from Wednesday 1st - Sunday 5th
JUL 8
Coming Soon to BBC. The BBC has released a selection of images from upcoming adaption of award-winning novel, My Name Is Leon.
Filming has begun in Birmingham on BBC One’s adaptation of Kit de Waal’s lauded debut novel. Produced by Douglas Road Productions (a Banijay UK company) in association with Tiger Aspect Productions, Ringside Studios and Vicarious Productions.
Follow @kitdewaal on Instagram
Coming Soon to BBC. The BBC has released a selection of images from upcoming adaption of award-winning novel, My Name Is Leon.

QUICK, ONLINE READS
A short story taken from Protest: Stories of Resistance.
Don’t dip your pen in someone else’s blood: writers and ‘the other’
Article from The Irish Times
Second Prize in the Bare Fiction Prize for Flash Fiction 2014.
My Irish grandmother was mistress of the stretch
Article from The Irish Times
I wanted to write about a care system that didn’t care very much
Article from The Guardian

PUBLISHED WORK
Capturing the extraordinary moments in our ordinary lives.
Best selling debut novel.
A valuable anthology of working-class writers.

INTERVIEWS, CONVERSATIONS AND MORE
READ - The Times Literary Supplement, Twenty Questions with Kit de Waal
READ - The Guardian, ‘I read my first novel aged 22’
WATCH - The Edinburgh International Book Festival, Kit de Waal with Damian Barr
READ - The Guardian, 'As soon as you introduce a talking horse, I'm just not interested'
READ - The Guardian, Interview - ‘Writing’s very solitary – you do it because you want to find readers’
GALLERY
