Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards 2012

Twenty authors have been shortlisted to win ?30,000 in the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards 2012, in partnership with Creative Scotland.

Categories include: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, and First Book ? the Awards recognise and reward the literary talent of authors from or resident in Scotland, or those whose book is of particular Scottish interest.

One finalist from each category will be selected in June. Each of the four will receive ?5,000. The finalists will then go on to compete for the overall Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year, to be announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, and the winner will receive an additional ?25,000.

The shortlist is:

Fiction

• Alan Bissett, Pack Men (Headline)
• Jane Harris, Gillespie and I (Faber)
• J M Ledgard, Submergence (Chatto & Windus)
• Ali Smith, There but for the (Hamish Hamilton)
• Zoe Strachan, Ever Fallen in Love (Sandstone Press)

Non-Fiction

• Bella Bathurst, The Bicycle Book (Harper Collins)
• Janice Galloway, All Made Up (Granta)
• Roger Hutchinson, The Silent Weaver (Birlinn)
• Kapka Kassabova, Twelve Minutes of Love (Portobello)
• Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires (Princeton University Press)

Poetry

• John Burnside, Black Cat Bone (Jonathan Cape)
• Angus Peter Campbell, Aibisidh (Birlinn)
• Carol Ann Duffy, The Bees (Picador)
• Andrew Greig, As Though We Were Flying (Bloodaxe)
• J O Morgan, Long Cuts (CB Editions)

First Book

• Simon Stephenson, Let Not the Waves of the Sea (John Murray)
• Luke Williams, The Echo Chamber (Hamish Hamilton)
• Karin Altenberg, Island of Wings (Quercus)
• Rachael Boast, Sidereal (Picador)
• Allan Wilson, Wasted in Love (Cargo)

Judges

The panel of judges is chaired by Dr Gavin Wallace, Portfolio Manager for Literature , Publishing and Language and includes: Alistair Moffat, Artistic Director of the Borders Book Festival; Tom Pow, award-winning writer and poet; Sally Magnusson, broadcaster and writer; and David McCormack, Assistant Manager of Waterstones in Dunfermline.

Book-lovers and readers will have a say in which title is selected as the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year in a month-long public vote that begins in June 2012.

Previous winners of the prestigious Award include talented authors such as Jackie Kay for her autobiography Red Dust Road in 2011; Donald Worster for his biography A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir in 2010; James Kelman for his novel Kieron Smith, boy in 2009; and Edwin Morgan for his poetry collection A Book of Lives in 2008.

Further information - www.scottishbookawards.com