About Kay
Kay Langdale was born in Coventry, England.
From a young age she loved to read and to write.
She attended Bedford College, London University, graduating with a first class degree in English Literature and then went to Oxford University where she completed a doctorate on Samuel Beckett’s prose fiction. She briefly taught twentieth century literature at St Edmund Hall, Oxford before beginning work as an account handler and copywriter at a brand consultancy.
She is married to a South African entrepreneur, with whom she has four children who are now mostly grown. Kay divides her time between their homes in Oxfordshire and Devon.
Now writing her eighth novel, Kay also works as an editor for the charity The Children’s Radio Foundation which trains young broadcasters in six countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
When not writing Kay enjoys running, ballet barre, yoga, swimming, coastal walking, learning Italian, cooking and reading. Always reading.
I think the primary business of life – the ties that bind us; the complex, multiple transactions of long term relationships – mostly take place within the home, and that novels which are rooted in a domestic context can speak directly and authentically to the the reader’s experience and the narrative of their own lives.
I am intrigued by domestic spaces; by the secrets of invisible, unremarkable lives and the emotional landscapes therein.
I’m always very keen not to judge my characters. My hope is that the reader mostly won’t either.
I am intrigued by what Colm Toibin calls that ‘old business of mild grief’; people who have not lived the lives they wanted to live, have somehow been less than they hoped. The characters in my novels frequently make journeys to acceptance about the truth of themselves.