Lemn Sissay FRSL (born 21 May 1967) is a British author and broadcaster. Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, has been chancellor of the University of Manchester since 2015, and joined the Foundling Museum's board of trustees two years later, having previously been appointed one of the museum's fellows. He was awarded the 2019 PEN Pinter Prize. He has written a number of books and plays. Early life Sissay's mother, Yemarshet Sissay, arrived in Britain from Ethiopia in 1966. Pregnant at the time, she was sent from Bracknell to a home for unwed mothers in Lancashire to give birth. His birth father, Giddey Estifanos, was a pilot for Ethiopian Airlines, who later passed away in a plane crash in 1972. Sissay was born in Billinge Hospital, near Wigan, Lancashire, in 1967. Norman Goldthorpe, a social worker assigned to his mother by Wigan Social Services, found foster parents for Sissay while his mother returned to Bracknell to finish her studies. Goldthorpe named Sissay "Norman" and put him in the care of foster parents, telling them to treat the placement as an adoption. The events are depicted in the play Something Dark and in BBC documentary Internal Flight. His strongly religious foster parents wanted to name him Mark after the Christian evangelist Mark and give him their surname, Greenwood. When Sissay was 12 years old, his foster parents—who, by then, had three biological children of their own—placed him in a children's home and said no one from their family would contact him again. Between the ages of 12 and 17, Sissay was held in a total of four children's homes. With no surrogate or birth family to turn to when he aged out of the care system, he was finally given his birth certificate, revealing the name of his mother, Yemarshet Sissay, and his own legal name, Lemn Sissay. He was also given a letter from his files, dated 1968, written by his mother to Norman Goldthorpe, pleading for her son's return. She wrote: "How can I get Lemn back? I want him to be with his own people, his own colour. I don't want him to face discrimination." From the point of leaving care, he began the search for his mother and took back his real name. At the age of 17, Sissay used his unemployment benefit money to self-publish his first poetry pamphlet, Perceptions of the