Kae Tempest: podcast appearances and interviews

Kae Tempest, born in 1985, is an English spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist, and playwright. They have released seven studio albums and numerous singles, along with many collections of poetry, several plays, two novels, and one work of non-fiction as of 2026. Tempest has performed internationally at festivals and on various tours. After attending the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, Tempest initially performed under the name Excentral Tempest and was involved in a band called Sound of Rum from around 2008 to 2011. Their work received critical acclaim, winning the Ted Hughes Award for their piece Brand New Ancients in 2013, and being named a Next Generation poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014. Tempest's albums Everybody Down and Let Them Eat Chaos, released in 2014 and 2016 respectively, were nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. Their poetry collection Let Them Eat Chaos was also nominated for the Costa Book of the Year in the Poetry category. Their debut novel The Bricks That Built the Houses, published in 2016, became a Sunday Times bestseller and won the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers' Award for Breakthrough Author. In addition to their literary accomplishments, Tempest was nominated for the Brit Awards in 2018 as Best Female Solo Performer. In recent work, they released the album Self Titled in 2025 and published their second novel Having Spent Life Seeking in April 2026.