James Kelman

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James Kelman (born in Glasgow on June 9, 1946) 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, called the book 'a disgrace' when it was announced that Kelman had won. In 1998 Kelman was awarded the Scotland on Sunday/Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award.

During the 1970s he published a first collection of short stories. He became involved in Philip Hobsbaum's creative writing group in Glasgow along with Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead, and his short stories began to appear in magazines. These stories introduced a distinctive style, expressing first person internal monologues in a pared-down prose utilising vernacular Glaswegian speech patterns, though avoiding for the most part the quasi-phonetic rendition of Tom Leonard. Kelman's developing style has been influential on the succeeding generation of Scottish novelists, including Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner and Janice Galloway. In 1998, Kelman received the Stakis Prize for "Scottish Writer of the Year" for his collection of short stories 'The Good Times.'

Kelman has been a prominent campaigner, notably in issues of social justice and traditional left wing causes, and though he has shared platforms with Tommy Sheridan and SSP, he is resolutely not a party man, and remains at his heart a libertarian socialist anarchist. He lives in Glasgow with his wife and children, though has also lived in London, Manchester, the Channel Islands, Australia and America.

In his latest publication of 2006, an edition of Glaswegian political campaigner Hugh Savage's writings, Kelman sums up his understanding of the history of national and class conflict as follows:

In an occupied country indigenous history can only be radical. It is a class issue. The intellectual life of working class people is ‘occupied’. In a colonised country intellectual occupation takes place throughout society. The closer to the ruling class we get the less difference there exists in language and culture, until finally we find that questions fundamental to society at its widest level are settled by members of the same closely knit circle, occasionally even the same family or ‘bloodline’. And the outcome of that can be war, the slaughter of working class people.

Contents 1 Bibliography 1.1 Short stories 1.2 Novels 1.3 Essays 1.4 As Editor 1.5 External links

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Short stories

• An Old Pub Near The Angel (1973)
• Not Not While The Giro (1983)
• Lean Tales (1985) (joint volume with Alasdair Gray and Agnes Owens)
• Greyhound For Breakfast (1987)
• The Burn (1991)
• The Good Times (1998)

[edit] Novels

• The Busconductor Hines (1984)
• A Chancer (1985)
• A Disaffection (1989)
• How late it was, how late (1994) (winner of the Booker Prize)
• Translated Accounts (2001)
• You Have To Be Careful In The Land Of The Free (2004)

[edit] Essays

• Some Recent Attacks (1992)
• And The Judges Said (2002)

[edit] As Editor

• An East End Anthology, ed. Jim Kelman (1988)
• Hugh Savage, Born up a Close: memoirs of a Brigton boy, ed. James Kelman (2006)

[edit] External links

• James Kelman at www.contemporarywriters.com includes a "Critical Perspective" section
• How Late It Was, How Late: a play created by Rude Mechanicals in Austin, Texas (2003)

Persondata
NAME	Kelman, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Scottish writer
DATE OF BIRTH	June 9, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH	Glasgow, Scotland
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH