Allan Gaw, Suzy Aspley and Daniel Aubrey up for Bloody Scotland debut prize
The Bloody Scotland Debut Prize shortlist for 2024 has been revealed, as the award celebrates its fifth anniversary this year.
Previous prize winners include Claire Askew (2019), Deborah Masson (2020), Robbie Morrison (2021), Tariq Ashkanani (2022) and Kate Foster (2023), who has gone on to be longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024 and shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2024.
Among those shortlisted for the 2024 prize are Suzy Aspley with Crow Moon (Orenda). Aspley previously won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect award in 2019 with the idea that went on to inform her debut.
Joining Aspley on the shortlist is Daniel Aubrey with Dark Island (Harper North) and Allan Gaw with The Silent House of Sleep (SA Press). A medical pathologist by training, Gaw was a runner-up in the 2023 Glencairn / Bloody Scotland short crime story competition and his story – The Last Tram to Gorbals Cross — went on to be published in Scottish Field magazine in April 2023.
Completing the shortlist is Doug Sinclair with Blood Runs Deep (Storm Publishing) and Martin Stewart with Double Proof (Polygon).
The 2023 Bloody Scotland Debut Prize will be judged by BBC Scotland’s arts corresponden, Pauline McLean, new product development manager from sponsors Glencairn Crystal Kenny Tweedale, and journalist, author and 2022 Debut Prize winner Tariq Ashkanani.
On the opening day of the Bloody Scotland festival, Friday 13th September, the shortlisted debut authors will appear on a panel at Central Library in Stirling chaired by McLean. The prize presentation will take place in the ballroom of The Golden Lion Hotel and winners will be interviewed on stage by TV and radio presenter Bryan Burnett, after which they will join a procession led by the Stirling Schools Pipe Band to the first event of the evening at The Albert Halls.
