Irvine Welsh is a Scottish novelist, playwright and short story writer. His 1993 novel Trainspotting was made into a film of the same name. His work is characterised by a raw Scots and brutal depiction of Edinburgh life. He has also written plays and screenplays, and directed several short films.
Edwin George Morgan was a Scottish poet and translator associated with the Scottish Renaissance. He is widely recognised as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century. In 1999, Morgan was made the first Glasgow Poet Laureate. In 2004, he was named as the first Makar or National Poet for Scotland.
Alison Louise Kennedy is a Scottish writer, academic and stand-up comedian. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction and is known for her dark tone, blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work. She contributes columns and reviews to European newspapers.
William McIlvanney was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet. He was known as Gus by friends and acquaintances. McIlvanney was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s. He is regarded as "the father of Tartan Noir" and as Scotland's Camus.
Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White. His latest book is a novel for young adults, D: A Tale of Two Worlds, published in 2020.
Andrew O'Hagan is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. Three of his novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction and he has won several awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet and essayist. In 2021 she became Scotland's fourth Makar.
Louise Welsh is an English-born author of short stories and psychological thrillers, resident in Glasgow, Scotland. She has also written three plays, an opera, edited volumes of prose and poetry, and contributed to journals and anthologies. In 2004, she received the Corine Literature Prize.
Canongate Books is an independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Andrew Greig is a Scottish writer. He was born in Bannockburn, near Stirling, and grew up in Anstruther, Fife. He studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and is a former Glasgow University Writing Fellow and Scottish Arts Council Scottish/Canadian Exchange Fellow. He lives in Orkney and Edinburgh and is married to author Lesley Glaister.
Anne Donovan is a Scottish author from Glasgow best known for her novel Being Emily. Her short story collection Hieroglyphics and Other Stories was published in 2001. This is currently one of the prose set texts for Scottish Literature in Scottish schools. Her first novel, Buddha Da, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2003. A second novel, Being Emily, followed in 2008. Her most recent novel Gone Are The Leaves, was short-listed for the 2014 Saltire Scottish Literary Book of the Year Award.
Zoë Strachan is a Scottish novelist and journalist. She also teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow.
Dilys Rose is a Scottish fiction writer and poet. Born in 1954 in Glasgow, Rose studied at Edinburgh University, where she taught Creative Writing from 2002 until 2017. She was Director of the MSc in Creative Writing by Online Learning from 2012 to 2017. She is currently a Royal Literary Fellow at the University of Glasgow. Her third novel Unspeakable was published by Freight Books in 2017.
The Saltire Society Literary Awards are made annually by the Saltire Society. The awards seek to recognise books which are either by "living authors of Scottish descent or residing in Scotland," or which deal with "the work or life of a Scot or with a Scottish question, event or situation." The awards have been described as "the premiere prize for writing by Scots or about Scotland."
Alasdair James Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, Lanark (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards.
The Death of Bunny Munro is a 2009 novel written by Nick Cave, best known as the lead singer of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It is his second and most recent novel, the first being And the Ass Saw the Angel, published in 1989.
The Girl on the Stairs is the 5th psychological crime thriller by Scottish author Louise Welsh. The book was first published in 2012 by publisher John Murray. Welsh's first novel, The Cutting Room, won several literary prizes.
Chris Dolan is a Scottish novelist, poet, and playwright.
Aileen Christianson was Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She was well known as a scholar of Scottish literature and women's writing, and as senior editor of 'The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle' and of collections of Scottish women's writing. Her experience over decades made her a recognised authority on both Carlyles. She gained an MA (hons.) in English and History from the University of Aberdeen in 1966.
Isobel Murray is a Scottish literary scholar, Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen. She edited the work of Oscar Wilde and Naomi Mitchison. She also edited a series of interviews which she and her husband Bob Tait carried out with Scottish writers, and wrote a biography of the writer Jessie Kesson.
