Multi-award winning writers and household names Irvine Welsh, James Kelman and Jenni Fagan feature alongside emerging talents Chitra Ramaswamy and Martin MacInnes in the shortlists for the 2016 Saltire Literary awards, unveiled on Thursday.
The shortlists for the six awards that make up the 2016 Saltire Literary Awards were officially announced at an event hosted at the Edinburgh West End branch of Waterstones and featured a performance from last year’s winner of the Poetry Book of the Year Award, Ryan van Winkle.
Widely regarded as Scotland’s most prestigious book awards, the Saltire Literary Awards are organised by the Saltire Society, a non-political independent charity founded in 1936 which has membership branches throughout Scotland.
Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson, two of the 1994 ‘New Generation’ Poets , a 20 strong list of contemporary poets chosen by a prestigious panel of judges led by writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, are up against John Glenday, Pàdraig MacAoidh / Peter Mackay, J.O. Morgan and Vicki Husband in the hotly contested Poetry Book of the Year Award.
Meanwhile, academics and scientists covering subjects as varied as Scotland’s booming Arctic whaling trade in the nineteenth century, a meticulously mapped record of the Vikings’ significant relationship with the island of Islay and a vivid first-hand account of oil exploration in the North Sea all contribute to a rich line-up in the research and history book of this year’s Awards.
In the non-fiction category, Amy Liptrot’s acclaimed book The Outrun, winner of the Wainwright prize for the best UK nature and travel writing, competes with John Kay’s Other People’s Money, a revelatory tour of the financial world as it has emerged from the wreckage of the 2008 crisis. The category also includes new books from academic James Crawford, writer Richard Holloway and cartography specialist John Moore.
The Fiction Book of the Year shortlist features a number of acclaimed authors, including the latest novel from 2012 Saltire Book of the Year winner, James Kelman, alongsideThe Blade Artist, the latest offering from Edinburgh-born Irvine Welsh, which plots a new life for Begbie, star of Welsh’s seminal Trainspotting, as an artist and family man living in California. Also featured is The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan, one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, the critically acclaimed The Brilliant & Forever by Kevin MacNeil, Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project, also shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize, as well as This Must be the Place from bestselling author Maggie O’Farrel.
The First Book of the Year shortlist is particularly varied. Entries include Scottish lawyer Isabel Buchanan’s biographical account of her time spent as a 23-year-old working on death-row cases in Pakistan, journalist Chitra Ramaswamy’s beautiful, terrifying, and emotional reflection on her own pregnancy, Infinite Ground, a sinister thriller set in South America by Martin MacInnes, and This Changes Things, Claire Askew’s first full collection of poetry, which examines the lives and experiences of socially or economically marginalised women.
The six awards for the 2016 Saltire Literary Awards, each accompanied by a £2,000 cash prize to the winner, are:
- The Saltire Society Scottish Fiction Book of the Year Award;
- The Saltire Society Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award;
- The Saltire Scottish Research Book of the Year Award supported by the National Library of Scotland;
- The Saltire Scottish History Book of the Year Award supported by the Scottish Historical Review Trust;
- The Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award supported by the Scottish Poetry Library; and
- The Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award.
The winning book from each of these awards will go on to compete for the coveted Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award and an accompanying £6,000 cash prize, awarded to Michel Faber last year for his novel The Book of Strange New Things.
The shortlist for the 2016 Saltire Publisher of the Year Award was also revealed alongside the shortlist for a new initiative for 2016, the Saltire Emerging Publisher of the Year Award. As part of Inspiring Scotland programme, announced to celebrate the Saltire Society’s 80th anniversary earlier this year, the winner of the Publisher of the Year Award will receive a fully funded place to the Yale Publishers Course in August 2017, with the winner of the Emerging Publisher of the Year Award to receive a £500 bursary to develop their skills and experience in the industry.
The winners of all six book Awards as well as the two publishing awards will be formally announced at a special ceremony in Edinburgh on 24 November.
Saltire Society Executive Director, Jim Tough said: “Spanning academia, poetry, biography and prose, the sheer scale and variety of writing talent to be seen in the shortlists is remarkable. 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.”
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