Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day. The podcast that celebrates the things

that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding

that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger because learning how to fail in life actually means

learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day and every

week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. When the writer

Kit DeVal got a publishing deal for her first novel, my name is Leon, after a six-way auction,

she used her advance to set up a fully funded fellowship for a disadvantaged writer to do a two-year

creative writing masters at Birkbeck College. As the daughter of an Irish mother and a Caribbean

father who grew up in working-class Birmingham in the 60s and 70s, DeVal knew how hard it could be

to break out into the creative arts. Before becoming an author, she worked for 15 years in criminal

and family law and used to advise social services on the care of foster children. The fellowship

then was her way of giving back, of extending a hand to those who, in her words, don't always get

the breaks. It was a typically thoughtful gesture from a writer whose work is rooted in empathy

and experience and who always seeks to give her characters a three-dimensional dignity on the page.

Her debut 2016 novel, my name is Leon, told the story of a mixed-race nine-year-old boy and his

quest to reunite his family after being taken into care. It won the Irish Book of the Year award.

Her second novel, The Trick to Time, was long-listed for the 2018 Women's Prize. A short story

collection followed and now DeVal has turned her gaze onto her own life. Her extraordinary memoir,

without warning and only sometimes, tells the story of a childhood of opposites and extremes.

Her mother was a Jehovah's Witness who believed Armageddon was coming and the only acceptable

reading matter was the Bible. It took many years for DeVal to find her way to books. When she did,

she would discover a love of reading that changed her life and inspires her to this day.

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