All at Birlinn offer their sincere and joy-filled congratulations to Angie Crawford, non-fiction and Scottish buyer for Waterstones, who has been named a Book Trade Rising Star. This is a much-coveted award from the Bookseller and it is well deserved. Angie is no new-comer to the trade but has worked her way up from the shop floor to become one of the most respected and influential booksellers in the business… but also, one of the nicest! We could not be more delighted for her.

Angie Crawford’s career in books may have lost out to teaching had it not been for author and illustrator Debi Gliori. “I was about 20 and saw her at an event; what she said made me want to be a bookseller.” This led Crawford to the shop floor at Dillons in 1997, before joining the buying team at Waterstones Edinburgh two years later. Aside from a stint at Ottakar’s, Waterstones north of the border has been Crawford’s patch, moving up the ranks until landing the plum role of Scottish buying manager in 2008, adding the food and drink category in 2021. She’s become a Scottish “lynchpin”, curating Scottish Book of the Month and sitting on the panel for Scottish Book Trust.

This year she is working on a partnership with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, a career highlight. “It’s one of the things I’m really proud of at Waterstones: our focus and passion for books that are published in Scotland,” she says.