Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My cast away this

away this My castaway this week is the writer Mallory Blackman, a prolific and multi-award winning author

she has powered her way to success not just just through talent, but dogged determination and perseverance, too.

From the careers mistress who told her black people don't become teachers to the 82 rejection

letters she received before she was published, significant

parts of her life seemed to have been spent proving people wrong. A technology whiz, her first

career was in computing. As a writer, her books have tackled challenging themes, bullying, teenage pregnancy, racism and

terrorism. Currently children's laureates, her own formative years were spent in South London,

where as a little girl she went from thinking

everyone was her friend to feeling as a teenager that the world was her enemy.

She says good stories made me reassess the world and people as I thought I knew them. Great stories made me reassess the world and people as I thought I knew them great stories made

me reassess myself so Mallory Blackman assessing ourselves I think that's a very

tricky thing to do and what would you have put in the introduction that I didn't? I think that was a beautiful

introduction, thank you. In terms of an assessment of who you are, how would you sum

yourself up? I'm still working that out. You know there's certain things I think oh I'm not sure how I feel about that so I think it's an ongoing process

but I think that's the way it should be really. Children and particularly teenagers are who you specialize in writing for and I would say that teenagers are who you specialised in writing for and I would say that teenagers

are just about as tough as it gets in terms of an audience. As a readership for

them how do you judge the right subjects and the right tone? I go for first and foremost I go for the

subjects that I would have been interested in as a teenager, all the topics I'd love to

...