Irvine Welsh

Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of Louis-Ferdinand Destouches .He was a French writer and physician. The name Céline was the first name of his grandmother. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that... modernized both French and world literature. The only child of Ferdinand-Auguste Destouches and Marguerite-Louise-Céline Guilloux, he was born Louis-Ferdinand-Auguste Destouches in 1894 at Courbevoie, just outside Paris in the Seine département . His father was a minor functionary in an insurance firm and his mother was a lacemaker. In 1905 he was awarded his Certificat d'études, after which he worked as an apprentice and messenger boy in various trades. Between 1908 and 1910 his parents sent him to Germany and England for a year in each country in order to acquire foreign languages for future employment. From the time he left school, until the age of eighteen, Céline worked various jobs, leaving or losing them after only short periods of time.
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Alasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years. It is now regarded as a classic, and was described by The Guardian as "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction." His novel Poor... Things won the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. He is a Scottish civic nationalist and a republican. Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision", and as "a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today" and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian". Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow. His father had been wounded in the First World War and worked at the time in a factory, while his mother worked in a shop.
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James Kelman is an influential writer of novels, short stories, plays and political essays. His novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. Kelman won the 1994 Booker Prize with How late it was, how late and aroused... something of a controversy in doing so: one of the judges, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, denounced the book as 'a disgrace' when Kelman was announced as the winner. Kelman has since said that his Booker prize win, specifically the negative publicity and attacks made as a result, made publishers more reluctant to handle his work. In 1998 Kelman was awarded the Scotland on Sunday/Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award. In 2008 he won Scotland's most prestigious literary award the Saltire Society's Book of the Year award for Kieron Smith, Boy Kelman says : My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city.
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William McIlvanney is a writer of crime stories, novels, and poetry. McIlvanney is 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. McIlvanney was born in the town of Kilmarnock,... the son of a miner. He studied at Kilmarnock Academy and later at the University of Glasgow, after which he worked as an English teacher between 1960 and 1975. His first book, Remedy is None, was published in 1966 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Docherty , a moving portrait of a miner whose courage and endurance is tested during the depression, won the Whitbread Novel Award. The Big Man , is the story of Dan Scoular, an unemployed man who turns to bare-knuckle fighting to make a living. Both novels feature typical McIlvanney characters - tough, often violent, men locked in a struggle with their own nature and background. His novel, The Kiln , is the story of Tam Docherty, the grandson of the hero of Docherty. It won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award.
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