Alan Warner

Alan Warner is a Scottish novelist. Hу also writes non-fiction, poetry, and short stories. Many critics consider him, alongside Irvine Welsh and A. L. Kennedy, among the most thrilling voices in contemporary Scottish literature.

Alan Warner was born in Connel, near Oban. Warner's upbringing was influenced by his father, a Yorkshireman who had served in World War Two, and his parents, who managed various businesses, including a coal delivery service, a shop in Kilchoan, and a small hotel in Oban.

Warner attended Oban High School and discovered his passion for literature at the age of fifteen when he encountered novels like Charles Webb's The Graduate, André Gide's The Immoralist, and Albert Camus' The Outsider. He attended Ealing College in London and later Glasgow University, where he wrote his MPhil thesis on Joseph Conrad.

His debut novel, Morvern Callar (1995), won the Somerset Maugham Award. Morvern Callar has been adapted as a film directed by Lynne Ramsay.

It was followed by These Demented Lands (1997), which won the Encore Award. His third novel, The Sopranos (1998), won the Saltire Society's Scottish Book of the Year Award.

The Sopranos has been adapted by Alan Sharp and Michael Caton-Jones for the screen titled Our Ladies (2019), directed by Michael Caton-Jones.

His other works include These Demented Lands (1997), winner of the Encore Award; The Sopranos (1998), winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award; The Man Who Walks (2002), an imaginative and surreal black comedy; and The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven (2006).

His novel The Stars in the Bright Sky made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize in 2010, and in 2013, Alan Warner received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Deadman's Pedal.

Alan Warner is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Now he is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Aberdeen.