Kelman and Welsh on Saltire shortlist

Irvine Welsh and James Kelman are among the names in the running for the Saltire Literary Awards.

Welsh’s The Blade Artist, featuring the return of Trainspotting character Begbie, has been shortlisted for the Fiction Book of the Year award.

He is up against Kelman’s latest novel Dirt Road, as well as the Man Booker Prizenominated His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet.

Also shortlisted are The Sunlight Pilgrims by Granta best young British novelist Jenni Fagan, Kevin MacNeil’s The Brilliant & Forever, and This Must Be The Place from Maggie O’Farrell.

The Saltire Society organises the awards with the winners given £2,000.

Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson are among those shortlisted for the Poetry Book of the Year award, while Orkney author Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun and John Kay’s Other People’s Money are two of the candidates for the non-fiction award.

Those in line for the First Book of the Year award include Isabel Buchanan for her biographical account of working on death-row cases in Pakistan.

The shortlists were revealed at an event in Edinburgh on Thursday and the winners will be announced next month.

The winning book from each category will go on to compete for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year award and a £6,000 prize, which last year went to Michel Faber for his novel The Book of Strange New Things.

Jim Tough, Saltire Society executive director, said: “Spanning academia, poetry, biography and prose, the sheer scale and variety of writing talent to be seen in the shortlists is remarkable.”

Irvine Welsh has been shortlisted.