Douglas Stuart (writer)

Stuart was born in Sighthill, a housing estate in Glasgow, Scotland.[1] He was the youngest of three siblings. His father left him and his family when he was young, and he was raised by a single mother battling alcoholism and addiction.[2] His mother died from alcoholism related health issues when he was 16. Subsequently, when he would go on to write his debut Booker Prize-winning novel, Shuggie Bain, the book would be inspired by his struggles, his mother's struggles as she battled alcoholism and his relation with his mother.[3] Speaking about his mother, he says: "My mother died very quietly of addiction one day."[4] After his mother's death, he lived with his older brother before moving into a boarding house when he was 17.[2]

Writing on Lithub about working-class living in the late 1970s and 1980s, he notes that he grew up in a house without books and surrounded by poverty. This was the time when Thatcher-era economic policies had "decimated the working man," moving industry away from the west coast of Scotland, leaving behind mass unemployment, alcoholism, and drug abuse.[5]

He received a bachelor's degree from the Scottish College of Textiles and a master's degree from the Royal College of Art in London.[6] He had no formal education in literature and notes that while he wanted to study English literature in college, he was discouraged from choosing the subject by a teacher who mentioned that it would "not suit someone from his background," resulting in him subsequently studying textiles instead.[2]

Stuart moved to New York City at the age of 24 to begin a career in fashion design. He worked for many brands, including Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Banana Republic and Jack Spade, for more than 20 years.[6] Stuart balanced his writing with his design job. It is noted that he started writing his first novel when he was balancing 12-hour shifts as a senior director of design at Banana Republic.[7]

Prior to his first novel being published, his works were featured on The New Yorker and on LitHub.[8]

His first novel, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize, chosen by a judging panel comprising Margaret Busby (chair), Lee Child, Sameer Rahim, Lemn Sissay, and Emily Wilson.[9][10] Stuart is the second Scottish author to win the Booker Prize in its 51-year history,[11] after it was awarded in 1994 to James Kelman for How Late It Was, How Late,[12] which book Stuart has credited with changing his life, since it was "one of the first times he had seen his people and dialect on the page".[13][14][15] Stuart said: "When James won in the mid-90s, Scottish voices were seen as disruptive and outside the norm."[9]

Shuggie Bain was also longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction,[16] shortlisted for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize,[17] and was a finalist for both the 2020 Kirkus Prize[18] and the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction.[19][20] However, when Stuart wrote the novel, responses from publishers were not as encouraging, with the book being rejected by 32 US publishing companies[21] (as well as a dozen in the UK),[22] before it was finally sold to American independent publisher Grove Atlantic,[7] who published it in hardcover on 11 February 2020.[23] Shuggie Bain was later published in the United Kingdom by the Picador imprint of Pan Macmillan.[24]

The novel received generally favourable review coverage once it was published, including in The Observer,[25] The New York Times,[26] The Scotsman,[27] the TLS,[28] The Hindu,[29] and elsewhere. The book was praised for its authentic portrayal of post-industrial working-class Glasgow of the 1980s and early 1990s, and also for his capture of the "wry, indefatigable Glaswegian voice in all its various shades of wit, anger and hope."[4] Speaking at the Booker Prize award ceremony, Margaret Busby, chair of the panel, noted that the book was destined to be a classic, and went on to describe the work as a "moving, immersive and nuanced portrait of a tight-knit social world, its people and its values."[9]

In November 2020, Stuart revealed that he had finished his second novel, Loch Awe, also set in mid-1990s Glasgow.[30] The book is a love story between two young men, set against the backdrop of post-industrial Glasgow, with its territorial gangs, and divisions across sectarian lines. In his words, the book is about "toxic masculinity" and the violence that can stem from pressures on working-class boys to "man-up".[31][32]

In a conversation with 2019 Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo on 23 November, livestreamed as a Southbank Centre event, Stuart said: "One of my biggest regrets I think is that growing up so poor I almost had to elevate myself to the middle class to turn around to tell a working-class story."[21] Discussing the "middle-class" publishers' rejections he had received for Shuggie Bain, he told Evaristo: "Everyone was writing these really gorgeous letters. They were saying 'Oh my god this will win all of the awards and it's such an amazing book and I have never read anything like that, but I have no idea how to market it'."[21]

Stuart holds dual British and American citizenship.[33] He lives in East Village, Manhattan, with his husband, Michael Cary, an art curator at the Gagosian Gallery.[7]

• Shuggie Bain: A Novel. New York: Grove Press. 2020. ISBN 978-0-8021-4804-9. UK, Picador.

• Official website