Best-selling author Kit de Waal joins as an Ambassador

It is with great excitement that we can announce that best-selling author, Kit de Waal, has joined Wellbeing in the Arts as an Ambassador.

Her debut novel, My Name Is Leon, was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, and winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. In 2022, it was adapted for television by the BBC.

Kit’s 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. A collection of short stories, Supporting Cast, was published in 2020. An anthology of working-class memoir, Common People, was crowdfunded and edited by herself in 2019.

‘It’s such a privilege to be appointed an Ambassador for Wellbeing in the Arts who are helping everyone in our industries look after their mental health – even when we can’t afford it.  It’s never been more important to have this kind of support and I’m delighted to be part of the organisation’.

Kit founded her own TV production company, Portopia Productions, as well as the Big Book Weekend, a free digital literary festival in 2020.

She was named the FutureBook Person of the Year 2019, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Professor and Writer in Residence at Leicester University.

Her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes was published in August 2022.

Kit joins our other Ambassadors from across the industry, you can see who they are here.