{"id":688798,"date":"2026-07-13T06:35:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T06:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688798\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T06:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T06:35:20","slug":"lemn-sissay-talks-family-life-at-bradford-literature-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688798\/","title":{"rendered":"Lemn Sissay talks family life at Bradford Literature Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sissay has written about his own upbringing in his memoir, My Name Is Why. <\/p>\n

He writes about how he and his Ethopian mother were taken to a home for unmarried mothers in Wigan. <\/p>\n

He was placed into foster care against his mother’s wishes, and renamed Norman – a name he only realised was not his own several years later. <\/p>\n

Speaking about his life, and his interest in familial relationships, he said: “Through not having a family, I’ve got to see some of the magic of family.<\/p>\n

“That’s what the site’s about. It’s about seeing the power of family, in the negative and the positive.”<\/p>\n

The website he is talking about is a place where anyone can add their own memories, photographs or thoughts on family life. , external<\/a><\/p>\n

“It’s all just there for people,” he said. <\/p>\n

“One of the joys of the website is that people can go to it and they can see that family is so many things. <\/p>\n

“We sometimes have a fixed idea of what family is and actually that is the biggest mistake, because it is so, so diverse, the experiences of family, and that’s the joy of the site. <\/p>\n

“At Bradford Literature Festival I’m going to be talking about this, showing people some of the very funny messages people have left there.”<\/p>\n

One of these stories was written by a mother who said she regularly gets in her car to follow the sunset with her children – driving from the valley where she lives up over the hills to see the sun set over and over again. <\/p>\n

“These stories about family are worth their weight in gold, you know,” said Sissay. <\/p>\n

“Family at the base is a collection of stories between one group of people. It’s wonderful, it really is.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sissay has written about his own upbringing in his memoir, My Name Is Why. He writes about how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-688798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}