Making a Mark: Scottish Writers Against the World

In early February, the nominations were announced for The South Bank Sky Arts Awards.  This all-encompassing literature and arts award has a wide range of categories including Best Film, Dance, Pop Music, Visual Art, TV Drama...  The list, it seems, is endless.  But of course, there is one particular award, for Literature published in 2012, which caught my eye.

In spite of the award going almost unnoticed in the press, the nominees are not new to the literary award circuit.  The award behemoth, Hilary Mantel, is nominated for her Man Booker and Costa Book Award winning novel Bring Up the Bodies, as is her fellow Man Booker nominee Will Self for his novel Umbrella.  Despite the shortlist so far being a turgid repetition of the rest of the 2012 literary awards, the final nominee, a relatively unknown author from Aberdeen, sits alongside these literary titans.  Kerry Hudson, whose debut novel Tony HoganBought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole Me Ma was also shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s First Book of the Year Award, the Guardian First BookAward and the Green Carnation Prize, is clearly no stranger to seeing her name adorn lists.  Yet The South Bank Award nomination is, in my opinion, a completely different, and an incredibly exciting, ball game.

First of all, this is the first award Kerry Hudson has been nominated for which doesn’t acknowledge her as either an “LGBT” or “debut” author.  Such categorisations automatically limit the potential of a literary award.  When literary awards are confined to such criteria it not only barricades certain ‘types’ of authors within the award, but can also prevent readers and media from seeing in.  ‘First’ book awards do not receive sufficient media coverage simply because debut authors and their novels are not considered to be ‘established’ enough to warrant the column inches (it’s a somewhat ironic cycle: first novels get little coverage because they aren’t “established”, but struggle to garner reputations because of the lack of coverage).  The Guardian First Book Award receives substantial coverage because it is backed by the newspaper itself.  As a consequence then, even though Hudson has received shortlist nominations from three prestigious literary awards, her individuality, and the significance of these nominations, has been lost under the umbrella of the ‘debut’.

Photos courtesy of Nick Tucker Photography

Secondly, we cannot underestimate the magnitude of the 2013 South Bank Awards shortlist for literature.  There are only three books and that’s a very short shortlist.  Hudson is up against Man Booker nominated and winning authors.  This should not be viewed, as Hudson herself has self-deprecatingly suggested, as ‘not so much theunderdog as the under-flea on the underdog’, but as a debut novelist being acknowledged as being on par with the established literary elite.  In this nomination, Hudson is not the ‘debut’ or the “underdog”, she is an equal to Man Booker prize nominated and winning authors.  And I genuinely believe her novel should be acknowledged as such.

Finally, despite now living in London Hudson was born in Aberdeen, and can therefore be classed as a ‘Scottish’ author.  Admittedly, it seems slightly hypocritical to harp on about Hudson’s heritage when I have just criticised literary culture for being obsessed with categorisation, but it is simply a fact that Scottish authors rarely get acclamation from the big literary awards South of the Border, so when they do, we really should take notice.  For example, taking three major national literary awards from last year-the Man Booker, the Costa Book Awards and the National Book Awards-we will see that Scottish authors hardly graced the shortlists, never mind won. (When I say “major” I refer to the media coverage/influence/monetary value the awards have.  There are literally hundreds of literary awards, but only a handful makes it into the print/social media.)

So, the Man Booker 2012 shortlist:

 Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)

Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories/Faber & Faber)

Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies  (Fourth Estate)

 Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)

Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)

 Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber)

2012 Man Booker Lit Award Shortlistees (post Mantel's win).

While there was clearly a concerted and honourable effort to acknowledge independent publishers in this shortlist, it was not exactly representative of the Commonwealth - with four out of its six nominees being English.

Next, the Costa Book Awards.  Previously known as the Whitbread Book Awards, the 2012 shortlists for the Costa Book Award categories (Children’s Novel, First Novel, Novel of the Year, Biography and Poetry) contained…wait for it…ONE Scottish author  -  Kathleen Jamie - who won the Costa Poetry Book of the Year Award.  Jamie was the only Scottish author represented out of the 20 authors shortlisted.

And finally, the 2012 National Book Awards.  Now sponsored by Specsavers, the self-acclaimed ‘Oscars of the publishing industry’ are divided into a horrendously complicated set of categories that I will just link you to here.  Because of the vast array of names and awards offered by the National Book Awards, I won’t list all the shortlistees here.  But a glance over the list offers a similar, albeit cruder, conclusion to those above.

Essentially the point I am trying to make is that Scottish writers and writing is wholly underrepresented in the national literary and cultural awards circuit.  Which is why Hudson’s nomination alongside two (very) English literary heavyweights offers a stark contrast to the awards of last year, and also makes a very impressive statement (whether it means to or not) regarding the legitimacy of first time writers and, in Hudson’s case, their Scottish heritage.  While The South Bank Sky Arts Awards shortlists might not have garnered the same interest as the Man Booker or Costa Book Award shortlists (although I fail to see why, seeing as Mantel is the only author people are talking about at the moment), I only hope that when discussing the prize winner – whether it is Hudson, Self of Mantel – the judges of the South Bank literary prize make a clear acknowledgement of the magnitude of Hudson’s appearance on the shortlist, because it really should not go unnoticed. 

The South Bank Sky Arts Awards will be shown on Sky Arts 1 HD on the 14th March. 9:30pm.

Kerry Hudson will be at the fantastic Aye Write Book Festival in Glasgow in April.  Click here for more details on her event, and here for the festival's full programme.

You can buy Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice Cream Float from Waterstones and all other good independent high street booksellers (who pay their taxes!)