ONE of Scotland's prominent scientists has been awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in Scottish writing.
Professor Dame Sue Black, a noted expert in anatomy and forensic anthropology, has won the 2018 Saltire Book of the Year award for her non-fiction book, All That Remains: A Life in Death.
The book explores the "many faces of death" she has experienced in her more than 30 year career in forensic science.
Professor Black's book also won the non-fiction book of the year in the annual awards run by the Saltire Society, marking the second year in a row that the prize has gone to a non-fiction book: it was won last year by Border: Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova.
Professor Black's career has included investigating scenes of war crimes in Kosovo, identifying victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, as well as work in the UK and Africa.
She was made a Dame in the 2016 Birthday Honours for her services to forensic anthropology.
Professor Black describes the winning book as being “as much about life as about death” and said that rather than being something to fear, death is something we should accept “as an integral and fundamentally necessary part of life’s process.”
The judges of the annual awards, staged this year at Dynamic Earth, described the book as “curiously uplifting and life-affirming” and commented that “like all good memoirs”, it “reveals as much about the reader as the writer”.
Professor Black, who is Pro-Vice Chancellor at Lancaster University, said: "I am truly delighted to have won the Saltire Book of the Year award this evening.
"To have done so in such illustrious literary company is a very special honour.
"Over the past thirty years and more, I feel very lucky to have been able to work in a job that I absolutely love.
"Working with teams who are second to none in their field of expertise has made that experience uniquely rewarding.
"In writing this book, my goal was always to create a record of that experience but also to reflect on the important and positive lessons I have learned about life through the study of death in its many different forms."
The winners of the six categories were announced in Edinburgh: each award winner was given a £2000 prize, with the winner of the Book of the Year receiving £6000.
Leila Aboulela won the Fiction Book of the Year for Elsewhere, Home, while Jay Whittaker’s Wristwatch was named Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year.
The award for Research Book of the Year went to a Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, Tom Mole, for What the Victorians made of Romanticism and the History Book of the Year went to Les Wilson’s The Drowned and the Saved, an account of the sinking of US troopships Tuscania and Otranto off the coast of Islay in 1918.
Sal, the debut novel by Fife-based writer Mick Kitson won the 2018 Saltire First Book Award.
It was described as a "heartwarming story about the end of childhood, the strength of a sister’s love and the power of nature to heal even the deepest wounds."
The Publisher of the Year Award went to Edinburgh-based Canongate Books while Louise Welsh, the author, won a special award marking the 30th anniversary of the First Book prize, for her book The Cutting Room.
Sarah Mason, the programme director for the Saltire Society, said: "From poetry to publishing, fiction to academic studies, extending the length and breadth of the country and far beyond, this year’s Saltire Literary Awards are a testament to the outstanding calibre of modern Scottish literature in all its varied forms.
"Every one of the individual awards was hotly contested, making the judges’ decisions particularly challenging.
"My congratulations to all of the winners and my thanks to the judging panels, to all of our partners and supporters who have helped to make the 2018 Saltire Literary Awards such a resounding success."
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