Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book Awards - Category winners announced

Sundial Properties and the Scottish Arts Council are delighted to announce winners in the following categories for the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Awards, 2007:

• Fiction
• Non-Fiction
• First Book
• Poetry

The overall winner of Scotland’s most prestigious literary awards will be announced in a high profile public event at the Edinburgh International book Festival on 18 August 2007.

In a break with tradition, this is the first time that the Scottish Arts Council Book Awards, now generously sponsored by Sundial Properties, has made awards in categories. Each category winner receives a cheque for £5000, and goes forward to be considered for an additional prize of £20,000 (an overall prize of £25,000) as the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year, the largest award of its kind in Scotland.

The category winners announced today are:

Fiction
Winner: The Boy and the Sea by Kirsty Gunn (Faber)
Comment from the judges:
‘This is a novella of consummate subtlety, imaginative daring, and emotional intensity, capturing the anguish of adolescent sensitivity and mystery in an intimate yet elemental story, rendered in a poetic prose of dazzling lyricism.’

Selected from the following shortlist
Kate Atkinson – One Good Turn (Doubleday)
Kirsty Gunn – The Boy and the Sea (Faber)
Jackie Kay – Wish I was Here (Picador)
Bernard MacLaverty – Matters of Life and Death (Jonathan Cape)
James Robertson – The Testament of Gideon Mack (Penguin)

Non-fiction
Winner: A Lie About My Father by John Burnside (Jonathan Cape)
Comment from the judges:
‘John Burnside knows that ‘life is more complicated than our narratives’, but in this often overwhelmingly discomforting memoir of a failed relationship, he does more than justice to the plight of two lost and falling men, in writing of searing honesty and intimate delicacy.’

Selected from the following shortlist
John Burnside – A Lie About My Father (Jonathan Cape)
Roger Hutchison – Calum’s Road (Birlinn)
Rory Stewart – Occupational Hazards (Picador)

First Book
Winner: George Mackay Brown: The Life by Maggie Fergusson (John Murray)
Comment from the judges:

‘In this exceptional biography, with its marvellous balance of tact and affection, Maggie Fergusson’s revelatory account of George Mackay Brown gives us the desolations and consolations of an intensely private writer, and a vivid portrait of the extraordinary individuals and communities which nurtured his genius.’

Selected from the following shortlist
Maggie Fergusson – George Mackay Brown: The Life (John Murray)
Alice Greenaway – White Ghost Girls (Atlantic Books)
Jane Harris – The Observations (Faber and Faber)
Stef Penney – The Tenderness of Wolves (Quercus)

Poetry
Winner: Swithering by Robin Robertson (Picador)
Comment from the judges:

‘If the title Swithering foregrounds the uncertainties and emotional volatility that drive this remarkable collection, it doesn’t apply to Robin Robertson’s unerring command of poetic language and form: loss is rendered with supreme sharpness and control from a poet who is also a master of the killer last line.’

Selected from the following shortlist:

Anna Crowe – Punk With Dulcimer (Peterloo Poets)
W.N. Herbert – Bad Shaman Blues (Bloodaxe)
Robin Robertson – Swithering (Picador)

Members of the judging panel for 2007 are:
Elizabeth Laird, author and former prize winner; Dr Robyn Marsack, Director of the Scottish Poetry Library; Dr Gavin Wallace, Head of Literature at the Scottish Arts Council.

Background to the awards: The Scottish Arts Council has been giving its Book Awards since the 1970s. The Book of the Year awards have been running since 2002. In previous years the overall winner received a cheque for £10,000 while shortlisted writers received £2000 each. Previous winners include James Meek (2006); Kathleen Jamie (2005); James Robertson (2004); William Dalrymple ( 2003); Ali Smith ( 2002).

For further information please contact:
Jan Rutherford (Publicity & the Printed Word): 0131 337 9724 or mobile 07725 946892.

Notes to editors

1. The Scottish Arts Council champions and sustains the arts for Scotland, investing over £59 million from Scottish Executive and National Lottery funding to support and develop artistic excellence and creativity throughout Scotland. Further information is available on our website: www.scottisharts.org.uk
2. The awards form an important part of the Scottish Arts Council’s Literature Strategy as a means of raising the prestige of Scotland’s literature nationally and internationally, and celebrating the achievements of writers.
3. Privately owned Sundial Properties, www.sundialproperties.co.uk is a leading developer of high value residential property. The company has a particular focus on buildings of architectural importance in South East Scotland and has long championed the reoccupation of Edinburgh’s Georgian New Town by residential owners. The company is unique in Edinburgh in directly employing more than 50 skilled tradesmen who work primarily on the renovation of listed buildings.
4. The 2007 Edinburgh International Book Festival will take place from 11 to 27 August 2007 in Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh. The programme will be launched on 14 June 2007 and tickets go on sale at 9.30am on 19 June 2007. Telephone 0845 373 5888 or book online at: www.edbookfest.co.uk

Contact email(s)

media.office@scottisharts.org.uk

Issued by: Jan Rutherford (Publicity & the Printed Word)