MY PICK OF MODERN BLOKE LIT...

n DOUGLAS STUART: Won last year’s Booker Prize with Shuggie Bain, inspired by his relationship with his mother and her struggles against alcoholism. n MAX PORTER: Wrote Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, a hybrid of prose and poetry which was translated into 27 languages, and two more novels, all of them critically acclaimed. n SAM BYERS: A graduate of the renowned University of East Anglia creative writing course whose debut Idiopathy won the Betty Trask Prize for first novels under the age of 35. n ROSS RAISIN: A former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year whose novels include God’s Own Country, Waterline and A Natural. n JAMES SCUDAMORE: Author of four novels, the most recent of which, English Monsters, was described as ‘dark, tender, and troubling’ by fellow writer Edward Docx.