A writer of novels, short stories and plays, James Kelman was born in Glasgow in 1946. He left school at the age of fifteen to undertake a six-year apprenticeship in the printing industry. Having also worked in Govan, driving buses, he began to write when he worked in the Barbican Centre, in London.

In 1971 Kelman joined a creative writing evening class under the direction of Philip Hobsbaum. It was here that he met Alasdair Gray (b.1934) and Tom Leonard (b.1944), whose work would later appear alongside his own.

His collection of short stories, An Old Pub Near the Angel, was published in Maine, USA in 1973. His first novel, The Busconductor Hines was published in 1984. The depiction of working-class life in Scotland and the use of local vernacular became a characteristic feature of his work. Later work received much critical acclaim and he won the Cheltenham Prize (1987) for Greyhound for Breakfast and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for A Disaffection (1989), which was also short-listed for the Booker Prize. His fourth novel, How Late it was, How Late, the story of an unemployed Glaswegian builder and petty criminal who has been lifted by the police, won the Booker Prize in 1994. More accolades were received when his short story collection The Good Times (1999) won the Stakis Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. He is the author of a television screenplay, The Return (1991), and has written many plays for radio and theatre.

Kelman is vocal about the need for writers to be part of University staff. As a result he took up a position at the University of Texas teaching creative writing for three semesters (1998, 1999 and 2001). He later took up positions at the Goldsmiths College London and the University of Glasgow, where he taught creative writing.

He sees no worth in class hierarchies and reappraises notions of what it is to be Scottish or British through his existential protagonists. The ‘Eng Lit’ taught in schools and universities is viewed by Kelman as a means of control by England and the upper classes. His writing continually rejects ideas of a ‘Great Literary Tradition’ and instead concentrates on issues that are immediate and relevant, moving from issues of class speech to a general concern with political freedom of speech.

James Kelman currently lives in Glasgow with his wife and family.