Adam Kay

Adam Kay, born in Brighton in 1980, trained in obstetrics and gynaecology on the NHS and walked away from it in 2010, after a birth that went catastrophically wrong. Seven years later he published the diaries he had kept through those years as This is Going to Hurt, which sat at number one in the Sunday Times for over a year and which he later adapted himself for BBC One, winning a BAFTA. Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas collects the entries from the Christmas shifts, the ones nobody else wanted. Kay's Anatomy, illustrated by Henry Paker, is the first he wrote for children, a tour of the human body pitched at readers of eight and up and unembarrassed about the disgusting parts. He qualified at Imperial College London in 2004 and co-founded the musical comedy act Amateur Transplants while still a student.