SCOTS write Ali Smith has won the Costa novel award for book How To Be Both.
Ms Smith, who was made a CBE in the New Year's Honours, previously won the Goldsmiths Prize and made the Booker shortlist with the novel.
Focusing on the lives of a grieving teenage girl in the present day and a renaissance artist in the 1460s, it was published in two versions, both with the same cover but with the main halves switched.
Choosing Ms Smith above her fellow nominees Neel Mukherjee, Monique Roffey and Colm Toibin, Costa judges called How To Be Both "truly dazzling and inventive".
The Scottish author previously won the Costa debut novel award in 2005 for The Accidental.
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