The book industry has anointed 25 authors as the future of British writing.
Only two Scots are among the list of 13 women and 12 men, ranging from the established to the less well-known.
Book chain Waterstone's asked publishers, editors and agents to nominate the emergent writers likely to produce the most impressive body of work over the next 25 years.
Waterstone's selected from a list of 100 names, drawn up to mark the bookseller's 25 years in business. They are unveiled today as the 25 Authors for the Future.
The two Scots are crime writer Louise Welch and sci-fi author Richard Morgan. Also on the list is Irish-born, Edinburgh-based author Maggie O'Farrell, alongside novelist Marina Lewycka, historian Dominic Sandbrook and cookery writer Jo Pratt.
Morgan, 41, is a former tutor at Strathclyde University. Two of his novels, Altered Carbon and Market Forces, have been optioned by film-makers Warner Bros. He also wrote the Black Widow comic-book series for Marvel. He lives in Glasgow.
Welch, is the best-selling author of The Cutting Room and Tamburlaine Must Die, and a leading light in the Tartan Noir movement. The 42-year-old former secondhand bookshop owner who lives in Germany, won the Crime Writers' Association Creasey Dagger Award in 2002. She is set to return to the themes of sex and violence in her next project, a play entitled SM/MS.
O'Farrell, 35, won a Betty Trask Award for her debut novel After You'd Gone. It was followed by best-sellers My Lover's Lover, The Distance Between Us and The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.
The list also features authors who made headlines with their debut works - among them Gautam Malkani, who caused a stir with Londonstani, his much-hyped novel about young British Asians. Some became best sellers with their first books, such as Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and Susanna Clarke with Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.
Ones to watch Top 25 authors of the future:
- Naomi Alderman
- Susanna Clarke
- Siobhan Dowd
- Jasper Fforde
- Julia Golding
- Emily Gravett
- Jane Harris
- Steven Hall
- Peter Hobbs
- Marina Lewycka
- Gautam Malkani
- Robert Macfarlane
- Jon McGregor
- Charlotte Mendelson
- Richard Morgan
- Maggie O'Farrell
- Helen Oyeyemi
- Jo Pratt
- Dominic Sandbrook
- CJ Sansom
- Chris Simms
- Nick Stone
- Louise Welsh
- Ben Wilson
- Robyn Young
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