This is the BBC.

Hi, as Christy Young here, Desert Island Discs is taking its usual summer break.

So we thought we'd take this opportunity to showcase just a few programs from our extensive

back catalog.

And as this is a podcast, the music has been shortened for right reasons.

This week my guest is the writer Mallory Blackman, who I interviewed in 2013.

My cast away this week is the writer Mallory Blackman, a prolific and multi-award-winning

author.

She has powered her way to success, not just through talent, but dogged determination

and perseverance, too.

From the careers mistress, who told her Black people don't become teachers, to the 82 rejection

letters she received before she was published, significant parts of her life seemed to have

been spent proving people wrong.

A technology was, her first career was in computing.

As a writer, her books have tackled challenging themes, bullying, teenage pregnancy, racism

and terrorism.

Currently children's laureates, her own formative years, were spent in South London, where

as a little girl she went from thinking everyone was her friend to feeling as a teenager,

but the world was her enemy.

She says, good stories made me reassess the world and people as I thought I knew them.

Great stories made me reassess myself.

So Mallory Blackman, assessing ourselves, I think that's a very tricky thing to do.

...