[5] A one-off Homecoming Book of the Year award was made in 2009 to celebrate the "Year of homecoming": the award was presented to American professor Donald Worster for his biography of John Muir, A Passion for Nature.
[9][10][11] Subsequent winners of the lifetime achievement have been: In addition, an annual student travel bursary is awarded to a creative writing graduate, and the Ross Roy Medal is awarded for the best PhD thesis on a subject related to Scottish literature.
The award is open to novels, poetry and plays as well as non-fiction works on Scottish subjects.
The award for History Book of the Year was established in 1965 in honour of the historian Agnes Mure Mackenzie (1891–1955).
This award was initiated in 1998, and is made jointly by the Saltire Society and the National Library of Scotland.
It aims to recognise books which "represent a significant body of research and offer new insight or dimension to the subject".