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"The more we reinforce the stereotypes of who writes and who reads, the more the notion of exclusivity is reinforced. It takes balls to gatecrash a party." Kit de Waal published her first novel, My Name is Leon, in 2016 at the age of 55. She’s already put her money where her mouth is - using part of the advance she received from Penguin to set up a creative writing scholarship in an attempt to improve working class representation in the arts. Kit knows that - as a writer from a working class background - the success of her debut novel is a rare occurrence. Born to a Caribbean bus driver father and an Irish mother (a cleaner, foster carer and auxiliary nurse), Kit grew up in Birmingham and left school at 15 with no qualifications. She became a secretary with the Crown Prosecution Service and went on to have a career in social services and criminal law. Kit explores an issue that is deeply personal to her. She looks back at her own life and trajectory, and takes us on a journey around the country to find out what the barriers really are to working class representation in British literature today. "There is a difference between working class stories and working class writers. Real equality is when working class writers can write about anything they like - an alien invasion, a 19th century courtesan, a medieval war. All we need is the space, the time to do it - oh yes, and some way to pay the bills!" Producer: Mair Bosworth First broadcast on Â鶹Éç Radio 4 in November 2017.