Scotland's top writers among Saltire nominees

The shortlists for this year’s Saltire Society Literary Awards, Scotland's premiere literary prizes, have been announced, with household names and exciting emerging writers among the nominees.

The fiction shortlist is particularly bursting with well-known literary talent. James Kelman, who won Saltire Book of the Year in 2012 for Mo Said She was Quirky, is nominated this year for Dirt Road. He’s up against the bad boy of Scot-lit Irvine Welsh, whose new book The Blade Artist imagines seminal Trainspotting character Begbie as an artist and family man living in California.

Also up for the fiction prize is Jenni Fagan for second novel The Sunlight Pilgrims. In the same category, Graeme Macrae Burnet adds a Saltire nomination to his Booker nod for His Bloody Project. Bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell also makes the fiction grade for This Must be the Place, a love story with a fragmented structure described as a book concerned with "choices, chance, the pain and the joy of living."

The fiction nominees are delightfully rounded out by a book taking a swing at the literary establishment: Kevin MacNeil’s The Brilliant & Forever, which is set at a literary festival on a Scottish island where everyone is an aspiring writer, including the talking alpacas.

The nonfiction category sees nominations for Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun, which won the Wainwright prize for the best UK nature and travel writing, and John Kay’s Other People’s Money, described as “a revelatory tour of the financial world as it has emerged from the wreckage of the 2008 crisis.” They’ll compete with new books from academic James Crawford, writer Richard Holloway and cartography specialist John Moore.

It's a mixed shortlist for the First Book prize: there’s Trials, a biographical account of the 23 years Scottish lawyer Isabel Buchanan spent working on death-row cases in Pakistan; journalist Chitra Ramaswamy's Expecting, an emotional reflection on her own pregnancy; Martin MacInnes’ sinister thriller Infinite Ground; and poetry collection This Changes Things, the first by poet Claire Askew, which is said to describe and examine "the lives and experiences of socially or economically marginalised women."

Talking of verse, this year's poetry prize will be hotly contested by Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson, two of the 1994 ‘New Generation’ Poets, as well as John Glenday, Pàdraig MacAoidh / Peter Mackay, J.O. Morgan and Vicki Husband.

“Spanning academia, poetry, biography and prose, the sheer scale and variety of writing talent to be seen in the shortlists is remarkable," said Jim Tough, the Saltire Society's executive director. "As always, excellence is evident across all awards and I know the judges will have their work cut out to decide upon winners.

“The Saltire Society Literary Awards have a proud history of celebrating and bringing wider attention to excellence in all literary forms and I would like to offer my congratulations to every writer who has made it onto one of these shortlists and to the publishers presenting their work. I wish them the very best of luck when the awards are announced next month.”

The winners will be announced at a special ceremony in Edinburgh on 24 November. The full shortlists, including the categories of Best Research Book and Best History Book, are below:

Saltire Society Scottish Fiction Book of the Year Award

Jenni Fagan, The Sunlight Pilgrims (William Heinemann)
James Kelman, Dirt Road (Canongate Books)
Kevin MacNeil, The Brilliant & Forever (Birlinn)
Graeme Macrae Burnet, His Bloody Project (Saraband)
Maggie O’Farrel, This Must Be the Place (Tinder Press)
Irvine Welsh, The Blade Artist (Jonathan Cape (Vintage, Penguin Random House))

Saltire Society Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award

James Crawford, Fallen Glory (Old Street Publishing)
Richard Holloway, A Little History of Religion (Yale University Press)
John Kay, Other People’s Money (Profile Books)
Amy Liptrot, The Outrun (Canongate Books)
John Moore, Glasgow: Mapping the City (Birlinn)

Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year Award

Alan Macniven, The Vikings in Islay: The Place of Names in Hebridean Settlement History (John Donald)
Meiko O’ Halloran, James Hogg and British Romanticism: A Kaleidoscopic Art (Palgrave Macmillan)
Chesley W. Sanger, Scottish Arctic Whaling (John Donald)
David Taylor, The Wild Black Region: Badenoch 1750 – 1800 (John Donald)
Sebastiaan Verweij, The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland: Manuscript Production and Transmission, 1560-1625 (Oxford University Press)

Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the year Award

Robin Noble, Castles in the Mist (Saraband)
Kinda K Riddell, Shetland and the Great War (The Shetland Times Ltd)
Mike Shepherd, Oil Strike North Sea (Luath Press)
Angela Gannon and George Geddes, St Kilda: The Last and Outmost Isle (Historic Environment Scotland)
James Hunter, Set Adrift Upon the World (Birlinn Ltd)
Bob Editor Harris, A Tale of Three Cities: The Life and Times of Lord Daer, 1763 – 1794 (Birlinn Ltd (John Donald))

Saltire Society Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award

Kathleen Jamie, The Bonniest Comparie (Pan Macmillan (Imprint: Picador))
John Glenday, The Golden Mean (Pan Macmillan (Imprint: Picador)
Don Paterson, 40 Sonnets (Faber & Faber)
Pàdraig MacAoidh / Peter Mackay, Gu Leòr / Galore (Acair Ltd)
J.O. Morgan, Interference Pattern (Jonathan Cape, Penguin Random House)
Vicki Husband, This Far Back Everything Shimmers (Vagabond)

Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award

Claire Askew, This Changes Things (Bloodaxe Books)
Isabel Buchanan, Trials (Jonathan Cape (Vintage, Penguin Random House))
Chitra Ramaswamy, Expecting (Saraband)
Martin MacInnes, Infinite Ground (Atlas)

Saltire Publisher of the Year Award

Floris Books
Black and White Publishing
Saraband
Birlinn
National Galleries of Scotland

Saltire Emerging Publisher of the Year Award

Keara Donnachie, Publicity Officer, (Sandstone Press Limited)
Laura Waddell, Marketing Manager, (Freight Books)
Robbie Guillory, Assistant Publisher, (Freight Books)
Leah McDowell, Design and Production Manager, (Floris Books)
Sha Nazir, Publisher / Art Director, (BHP Comics)