Alan Warner

Alan Warner is a Scottish novelist born in Connel, Argyll in 1964. He studied at Glasgow Polytechnic and worked on railways before becoming a writer. His debut novel Morvern Callar (1995) was hailed as a landmark of new Scottish fiction and was adapted into a film directed by Lynne Ramsay in 2002. His subsequent novels include These Demented Lands (1997), The Sopranos (1998), The Man Who Walks (2002), The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven (2006), and The Stars in the Bright Sky (2010). The Deadman's Pedal (2012), set in the Scottish Highlands and following a young man who becomes a trainee railway signalman in the 1970s, won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction in 2012. Warner's fiction is notable for its vivid characterisation of working-class Scottish communities, its dark humour, and its lush, vernacular prose. He has lived in Ireland and the United States and currently lives in County Wicklow. He won the Somerset Maugham Award for Morvern Callar and was shortlisted for several major prizes throughout his career.