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.

Mallory Blackman is one of Britain's most beloved writers. Over 30 years she's written some

70 books which have sold millions of copies and helped shape our culture. Her most famous young adult

novel series, Noughts and Crosses portrays a fictional dystopia in which the situation of Black

and White people is reversed, with startlingly profound results. It was recently adapted for TV and

the rapper Stormzy is one of its most ardent fans. So when it came to writing her soon to be released

a memoir just saying there was really only one person who could do it justice. It is published by

Merke Books, Stormzy's imprint. But despite her success, Blackman did not start out as a writer. Her

parents arrived in Britain from Barbados as part of the Windrush generation and she grew up enduring

spells of poverty and homelessness. Although she wanted to be an English teacher, a school career's

advisor told her that Black people don't become teachers and she went on to study computers instead,

eventually becoming a systems programmer. When she turned her hand to writing in her late 20s,

Blackman received 82 rejection letters from publishers but she kept going convinced she had something

to say. Her first work was published when she was 28 so she really did have something to say and how.

By 2013 she was appointed the Children's Lariat now at the age of 60 but looking 21 I must say.

Her books are a staple of the GCSE curriculum. It's true. Most of the setbacks in my life have

propelled me forward she writes in her new memoir. There have been so many times when I thought my

life was ready set to run in one direction only to find myself heading down a completely different

...