A PROFESSOR from Dundee University received top marks this weekend at a prestigious awards ceremony at the Edinburgh book festival.

At a high profile ceremony in the capital to celebrate the inaugural Sundial Scottish Arts Council book of the year award, the university’s professor of creative writing Kirsty Gunn, was confirmed as the winner of the evening’s biggest prize for her novella The Boy and the Sea.

In front of an audience of her peers and industry professionals from around the globe Kirsty received a tasty cheque for £25,000 from William Gray Muir, managing director of award sponsors Sundial Properties.

The award was split into a £5000 payment as category winner for fiction and an additional £20,000 as overall winner of the book of the year.

A well-respected judging panel, including Dr Robyn Marsack, director of the Scottish Poetry Library, and Dr Gavin Wallace, head of literature at the Scottish Arts Council, lavished praise on Professor Gunn’s work.

They said, “The Boy and the Sea is perfectly realised with an economy where every word is beautifully weighted, and internal patterns of imagery and metaphor delicately and deftly woven.

“It is a novella of consummate subtlety, imaginative daring, and emotional intensity, capturing the anguish of adolescent sensitivity and mystery in an intimate yet elemental story, rendered in a poetic prose of dazzling lyricism.”