Kai Tempest is an English spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist and playwright. At the age of 16, Tempest was accepted into the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon. In 2013, they won the Ted Hughes Award for their work Brand New Ancients. They were named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society,[8] a once-a-decade accolade. Tempest's albums Everybody Down and Let Them Eat Chaos have been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. The latter's accompanying poetry book (also titled Let Them Eat Chaos) was nominated for the Costa Book of the Year in the Poetry Category.Their debut novel The Bricks That Built the Houses was a Sunday Times best-seller and won the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Breakthrough Author. They were nominated as Best Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards.Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020, using pronouns they/them.