The winners of this year’s Saltires, Scotland’s National Book Awards, one of the oldest literary prizes in the UK, were announced this evening Wednesday, 19 November 2025 at an exclusive ceremony in Edinburgh.
International bestselling author Kate Atkinson MBE was presented with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in a rare public appearance in her home city. Sir Ian Rankin spoke to Kate’s extraordinary career in a moving tribute.
Scotland’s Books of the Year were announced in Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry and Research.
Sean Lusk’s A Woman of Opinion took Scotland’s Fiction Book of the Year, Sarah Moss was awarded Scotland’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year for My Good Bright Wolf, and Scotland’s Poetry Book of the Year went to Anthony Vahni Capildeo for Polkadot Wounds.
Research Book of the Year was awarded to Bruce Peter for Art Deco Scotland.
The panels of judges applauded the range and quality of work on show across the categories, making for hard decisions in all cases.
On accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award, Kate Atkinson said: “Receiving the Saltire Lifetime Achievement Award is a tremendous honour, and I am so thankful to the judges for this recognition. It’s a pleasure to be recognised alongside so many gifted writers.”
Atkinson is the author of thirteen novels, as well as having published collections of short stories and plays.
She was recognised for her Services to Literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2011 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She follows in the footsteps of James Kelman, who received the coveted Award in 2024.
On Kate Atkinson’s Award, Director of the Saltire Society Mairi Kidd said: “We were absolutely delighted to present Kate Atkinson with this award. Through her global readership, Kate is a superb ambassador for Scotland.
“Her large casts of characters, intricate plots and deft handling of big themes speak to readers everywhere; the very special blend of literary and genre fiction she deploys sites her firmly within Scotland’s modern canon.
“We awarded Book of the Year to Case Histories in 2005, and cheered when Jackson Brodie’s television outing relocated him north of the Border.
“We were especially delighted that Sir Ian Rankin joined us at the ceremony to present Kate with her award; it was moving to see two key figures in the community of novelists shaping the identity of modern Scotland stand together on the stage.”
Memoir dominated the shortlists for Non-Fiction Book of the Year. Winner My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss is a devastatingly raw memoir which charts Moss’s journey after a recurrence of a teenage eating disorder in adulthood.
Touching on contested memories of girlhood, intrusive thoughts and the power of writing and books as an escape, the memoir is moving, sharp-witted and inspiring.
The Debut Non-Fiction Book of the Year is Foreign Fruit, the first full-length work by essayist, journalist and critic Katie Goh. A hybrid memoir taking the orange as a lens to examine identity, globalisation and migration, the judges described the writing as ‘luscious’.
The winner of Scotland’s Fiction Book of the Year, Sean Lusk’s A Woman of Opinion, delves into history to tell a story with significant modern resonance. The book fictionalises the life of pioneering eighteenth-century poet and feminist, Mary Wortley Montagu, whose previously unremembered travels in search of the autonomous life she dreams of eventually lead to the introduction of a smallpox vaccine for children in England in 1721.
Scotland’s Fiction Debut of the Year, Phantom Limb by Chris Kohler, also blends tradition and modernity. Through darkly funny magical realism, the novel follows in the ‘Scottish Gothic’ footsteps of James Hogg, James Robertson and others to examine the spiritual void of modern society, as a disillusioned Scottish minister stumbles upon a severed seventeenth-century hand with much to say.
Scotland’s Poetry Book of the Year is Anthony Vahni Capildeo’s Polkadot Wounds. The collection explores ecopoetics, identity and faith through relics and ruins and conversations with the living and the dead.
Trinidadian-Scottish writer Capildeo, a Forward Prize winner, engages with the impacts of lockdown on continuity and connection and raises big questions with a light touch and sense of hope.
Scotland’s Poetry Debut of the Year is Tim Craven’s vibrant and tender Good Sons. With mental health, family relationships, place and landscape taking centre stage, Good Sons grounds itself in the small, the ordinary and the earthy, while always keeping the expansiveness of human experience firmly in its sights.
The winners of the Debut Books of the Year each receive a cash prize and a mentoring package co-designed with them. Funding from Creative Scotland will also support a wider bursary and coaching programme attached to the awards.
Celebrating the 2025 winners, Mairi Kidd, Director of the Saltire Society, said: “Scotland’s Books of the Year 2025 showcase the exceptional literary talent of our small country today.
“The winning books are all very different, but there is a golden thread of connection running through them – the value of literature itself in troubled and troubling times.
All of our writers show a clear preoccupation with the complex and urgent questions facing us today, and all show us how books and reading can offer clarity, understanding and connection to sustain us as we grapple with our challenges.
Sarah Moss pays tribute to reading as a lifeline; Sean Lusk reminds us of those who have fought and won similar battles before; and Anthony Vahni Capildeo invites us to enter dialogue with the living and the dead through writing as well as physical connection.
“We congratulate all of the winners and debut winners, and hope new readers across the globe will find their way to these books through the Saltires. An enriching, inspiring and sustaining experience awaits.”
This year’s Saltires Speaker was Sunday Times bestselling writer Zoe Venditozzi, one half of campaign duo Witches of Scotland with Claire Mitchell KC. Zoe and Claire call for the posthumous pardon for witches of Scotland, have achieved an apology in Parliament and have been made honorary Doctors of Laws by Dundee University in recognition of their work.
Zoe reflected on the power of reading and writing to bring hope in frightening times, rooting her argument in the voicelessness of historic ‘witches’.
